Hello fellow voyagers,
Happy Columbus/Indigenous People’s day to those of you reading this in the U.S. I hope you’re all finding some time today to tap into whatever it is that helps you shine.
I’m spending part of today writing which I think makes me shine? Note the hesitation. My lifelong relationship with writing has had its ups and downs. As a young person I obsessively tried to capture the world through my roller pen. Nothing was real unless I had written it down. I stayed in touch with friends via letters (until the late 90’s, there wasn’t a choice beyond phone calls?!) and I meticulously detailed my emotions in poetry. I used my journals as weapons of rumination, attempting to attack the world’s problems through words. And then I stopped.
In part, I stopped because I started working with REAL writers in my job in New York publishing at the turn of the century.* I got to know the daily lives of some of my heroes like William Maxwell, J.M. Coetzee, Wisława Szymborska, Kazuo Ishiguro, José Saramago, and Michel Faber through workplace correspondence or by lurking outside their editor’s office doors, overhearing what was on their minds. I knew I wasn’t like them. I didn’t have characters waking me up at night, asking to be brought to life. I read first editions of Virginia Woolf’s journals in my office’s conference room where the books lived. I compared my journal to hers. It was not a favorable comparison.
Before putting a pause on writing, I got a tattoo of an inkwell on a spot on my body that would, just two years later, be called a tramp stamp. I moved out West to reinvent myself. I started a new career in tech. I stumbled through many jobs on my path to self-discovery, each of them giving me a piece of an ever-evolving puzzle along the way. When I wrote, I did so for work, putting together small posts like this one for the startups I worked for, trying to establish something unique yet geared toward a business need.
In 2015 I was in a confused headspace. I had a foot each in two worlds: the world of books and ideas and the world of design, engineering, and rapid-moving creativity. I wasn’t sure how to make my two feet-worlds walk in the same direction. Who was I?
Lucky for me, like some kind of IMF agent in Mission Impossible, I had a dormant rogue tool inside of me waiting to be reactived. Having run out of other options, I returned to writing. Writing — and more importantly, publishing— allowed my ideas to bounce around in other people’s heads (thank you) and come back at me in a new way.
This was one of my earliest pieces and it’s no coincidence that it focuses on human connection, technology, and a changing world. These forces felt like they were clashing within my little life.
Over time, I learned to love the thing that scares most people about writing: Writing is a commitment to vulnerability. Hitting the publish button is saying “I do” to the ideas you’re sharing. Lucky for me, years of working in tech taught me to think iteratively and not fear commitment. Everything changes over time anyway.**
Earlier today I read creativity scholar
(you may remember her from this Beautiful Voyager podcast interview) ’s thoughts on what it takes to achieve creative success in your life. It really comes down to three things:Valuing creativity
Building creative confidence
Having the to ability navigate creative work with its inevitable ups and downs
The first one has always been easy for me — check! done! The second one dogged me for over twenty years, but I’m getting over it with practice.*** The third is what I focus on now, learning more each day about the world of emotional regulation.
Writing was patiently waiting for me to find it again when I needed it most. It said, “I am the tool you need and I have always been here, waiting for you.”
Dear beautiful voyager, listen to the whispers of your own inner creative voice when you feel lost at sea. Your own creative lighthouse might be waiting out there for you, too.
* lol to turn of century. Time passing is weird.
** The man I married 16 years ago is not the same guy I’m married to today, and I’m good with that.
*** The publish button isn’t as scary eight years in.