When I first began blogging, friends and family were amazed. Who knew that I, who rarely spoke at family get-togethers, had thoughts?
All the Facebook “likes” swung me into the stratosphere. But some readers said: \”I like some of your posts better than others.\” I understood; to compare is human. Even with my favorite authors, I like some of their works more than others. But hearing that was hard. Getting praised for one post made me want to write an even better one the next time. I wanted to wow each time; outperform myself. But as soon as I started to think that way, I would freeze.
I knew better. Dealing with severe blocks has taught me to shun perfectionism. But I sometimes relapse. I always have to remind myself that the point of writing is the writing: the way I feel when caught up in an idea, the surprise of stumbling onto a new technique, or the pleasure of creating a graceful sentence.
I want to end forever the desire to impress. I want to forget about seeming and focus on being. I long for something solid to grab onto so that I will not be swept away by the shifting winds of opinion, lifted high during times of praise, slammed down during times of criticism, or suspended in mid-air by no response at all.
I want to find a solid core of self by which to measure my work without referring to opinions at all, ever again. When the Facebook “likes” fade, when my blog views dip and no one responds, I want to return to that solid core, the touchstone where truth resides.
I am still looking for it. But I have found an analogy that is almost as good. And it came about by my asking the question, What does any single post, good or bad, say about me? In other words, am I a mediocre writer on days I write a mediocre post? A brilliant writer on the days I excel? And do opinions, which I cannot control, describe or affect anything at all?
My ocean-loving imagination answered with the image of waves. I envisioned them rising and tipping over, frozen in mid-roll by the flash of a photographer. Like the snapshot of a wave, writing is an expression of the tumbling and rolling activity called creativity, something never still but always in transition. As for me, I am always the same “sea” no matter what the waves happen to be doing. In other words, no individual story, good or bad, defines me, any more than a single wave defines the sea.
Though my sea analogy comforts me some, I still long for a touchstone. Like opinions, the sea is fluid. I want a branch, an anchor, or at least a raft made of logs, a dependable image that brings peace to my mind. I want to cling, to grasp, to be safe; I want a stone-heavy standard by which to measure the worth of my creative efforts, so that I can stop depending on opinions, unreliable, fickle, and beyond my control.
But I have not found anything inside me that even vaguely resembles a stone. I am alive, and life does not petrify. I write, in part, because life moves too fast for me. Art is a way to create the stability life denies me; to capture moments in mid-flight the way I used to catch lightening bugs in summer, to make them be still so that they can mean something.
Sitting at my computer, writing, I am not entirely at the mercy of change. There I can freeze time on the page, while beneath me memories churn and feelings swirl, changing as some elusive core of me stays the same.
But that leads me back to the question: What about me stays the same from post to post, from story to story? Can opinions say anything about who I really am? What do they change? I have settled on another analogy. I think opinions are like wind; the most they can do to the sea is ruffle its surface while, beneath, the sea depths churn, giving rise to its true nature.
Meanwhile, I am constantly making new waves, the motion that leads to stories, poems, and essays. Some waves may be higher than others, some dull and slow, but whatever kind they turn out to be, I am determined to make them for as long as I can.
The art that emerges is their expression, a snapshot of movement, and for as long as I live I will be the wave-maker and snapshot taker called a writer, as above me the winds of opinion change and stir.