The dormant month

For the first time in the history of this blog, I didn't write anything for the entire month of September. Perhaps you've noticed? Writing a post just to say that, yes, I too have noticed that nothing much has been happening whenever I open up an empty post window feels sort of dramatic and self-aggrandizing in itself, but a few of you have commented-- and I thank you for doing so. It's lovely, really, to feel as though what I do in this space is, in some way, miss-able.

The truth is that writing that abortion post seems to have taken a lot out of me-- intellectually, emotionally, and also in terms of my writerly self esteem. I didn't intend for that to be the case. I was so sure the whole event would come and go, rolling off my back as though I'd grown duck feathers. Friends who've been through similar experiences shook their heads and warned me when I swore it was going to be no big deal for me, but, you know, it was. It is. It is in ways both difficult and astoundingly awesome. I have new friends now. I have new readers now. I have new perspective now. But I also have new anxieties now. This, of course, is how it is.

Three months on down the road, I remain nothing but steadfast in my conviction that writing about my experience was the right thing to do, but -- if nowhere but in my own mind -- it seems to have raised the stakes of this blog. It may well be the most "important"-- whatever that means -- thing I've written to date, and it's certainly the most charged (emotionally, politically) thing I've written here. And it made me want to write better, more seriously, less glibly and with more of a real aim-- at what? I'm not yet sure.

Also, I've been busy. The offline conversations that post generated were plentiful. Some of have dwindled and, as I mentioned, some have kindled new and important friendships. I didn't know the sort of people it would bring into my life, the sort of people who'd respond to it in some way or another, the sort of people who'd take interest in me as a person because of the way I chose to handle a problem that isn't really so uncommon. But now that they're here and talking to me and challenging me and encouraging me, I can't really help but feel like something I wrote -- something I made up out of my own little brain -- has made my own world a little bit bigger. That's kind of amazing, right? And no one is more surprised, humbled and excited about that than I.

So, let's call this quiet period my Epoch of Re-assessment. I'm thinking about the possibility of going to school again. I'm thinking about the sort of platform I want this blog to be -- the sort of ideas I need to process. How a blog is good for processing but not necessarily all that great for instilling rigor -- insular and self-congratulatory as it can be. And I'm thinking about how a relationship between added rigor and my usual spin cycle of ideas might look -- the thoughts I express here and the sort of persona I'll need to cultivate if I want to make a go at... something more... serious?

I'm intimidated, frankly. Well-meaning folks in my most bare-bones support system have been very encouraging, indeed. With a handful of exceptions (exceptions that made me doubt my efficaciousness as a practitioner of written communication, but did not make me doubt the rightness of my choices, I might point out), I received remarkably kind feed-back on that abortion post. But somehow all the well-wishing has me feeling as though I have even more at stake every time I sit down to pound out something -- anything -- witty, wise, winsome or resolutely un-ambitious -- whatever. Yep. Pretty classic. I'm psyching myself out and I know it. I did the same thing when I was working on my manuscript in grad school. Once my classmates and professors began to respond positively to my work, I found I had to lock myself in my office for an entire semester just to keep their encouragement from staunching the flow, just to squeeze those few little coagulated, sticky poems from the turnip that is me. For me, living up to the accomplishments of which I'm sorta kinda proud is always harder than overcoming failures. And that's where I am now--scared it's all downhill from here. And, from here, I know, I've barely gotten started.

So, I'd ask the friends who've been asking after my writing to be patient with me, but that's not really the point. I love that they care whether I write and notice when I don't, for sure, but the standards I'm worried about living up to are mine. So, really, I'm better served trying to be patient with myself and to let the writing come when it comes and not to become exasperated when it doesn't. I am trying not to assign so much significance (to piddly ol' blog posts) that I can't even write fluffier fare -- because it seems silly to take this blog so seriously. But I am having trouble writing fluffier fare. And less fluffy things too.

Which isn't to say things aren't percolating. It's just a slow drip. And that's okay. This time around, moving from the dormant state into a thaw is not something I want to rush.

Mixing metaphors, however? I'm totally fine with that.