On writing

So - I'm working on being more open and vulnerable as an experiment in self-improvement. 

I want to stop putting bits of my life in boxes so that people see certain parts of me but not others. Enough with the self-censorship.

I wrote more on this here (warning: existential crisis alert). No, I don't think I'm having a mid-life crisis. Thirtysomething crisis? (Is that a thing?). 

Anyway in the spirit of keepin' it real: I write poetry. A fair bit. Although I don't publish a lot; most of it is half finished lines of gibberish in my notebook that I'll come back to one day. I hardly tell anyone about this. Writing for me is usually extremely personal - regardless of the subject matter, I have trouble separating creative work from self, and therefore any opinions / compliments / criticisms I receive back are to me not just comments on my work, but on my self as well. "I don't like that poem = I don't like her", and so on. Maybe to the average neurotypical person this is a wee bit oversensitive / irrational, but in the immortal words of Austin Powers, it's my bag, baby. It's just how I process, and at 32 it is still no easier to deal with than it was when I was a child.

However, onward with this soul-baring experiment - I have some finished things over here, completely separate from anything else I do online, lest someone I know actually find that blog and read it (gasp!). When I have the time and mental energy I am going to move all my writing into this blog so that I can continue to push against the edges of my comfort zone and grow stronger from sharing my finished work.

Often though, it's the half-formed, gorgeous single lines in my notebook that give me the most pleasure.

Words and lines snatched from conversations, memories and emotions. Little snippets that are so evocative yet at the same time, meaningless on their own. Or perhaps they just conjure different things for different people. These words may never find their way into a finished piece of writing. But they are so lovely that I want to preserve them; to set them free into the world somehow.

I just counted - I have fifteen notebooks on the go at the moment. Surely this would suggest I would be comfortable calling myself a writer...? Hell no.

Perhaps one day it will come. Maybe I will learn how to separate work and self. Maybe fifty years from now poetry will devolve into single lines and I'll be able to puff out my chest and say 'Hey! I'm ok at that!'.

But not just yet.  :)