Day 7 of my writing challenge. Thus far, I’ve stuck with it, writing a minimum of 200 words every day this year. A couple days, I write 1500 words AND some poetry. Two days ago, I eked out 340 words and didn’t put them into publication. Every day, the writing has only happened as an afterthought at the end of the day.
I hope that by the time I’ve been doing this challenge for 30 days, I will have developed some consistency and structured writing time. I’d like to have prompts I can work off of, rather than just jotting down whatever manages to escape my overcrowded mind and make its way to my fingertips.
For now, I’m still working on figuring out why I wanted to do this in the first place, and what I hope to get out of it. A big part of it is therapeutic, the journal I always meant to keep but never could maintain.
In my time working with a therapist, I found that I primarily wanted them to listen so that I could feel like my story was being told. Every session ended too soon, leaving me feeling like I had only just begun to unload what I wanted to say, before being interrupted to hear their input. I felt that I wasn’t able to take their advice seriously because I they couldn’t possibly understand me or what I needed without having listened to me for hours on end.
This, I soon realized, was a silly assertion, but one that made me understand exactly what I was looking for in a therapist. I just wanted to be heard and understood. I wanted a witness, not a guide.
A couple weeks ago, in the midst of a deeply emotional episode, I posed to a good friend the question of whether or not I’m too much. I feel like it, often, especially when trying to connect with people that I feel a desire to be close to. I have this way of choosing a person and inundating them with information, a neverending stream of consciousness as I logic and reason my way through life. To me, it feels like I’m merely standing close enough to sprinkle them with water from the deluge that roars above my head at all times, the mighty waterfall of thoughts and observations and ideas that pounds me into the ground and stings the skin on my shoulders.
To me, it’s a mere fragment of what I experience on a daily basis inside my own head. To the people who receive it, it surely feels like more than a light misting.
I asked my friend, am I too much? Am I selfish for sharing? And he said, dude. It’s too much. Far too much for one person to handle. But you’re not meant to be sharing all this with one person. You’re an artist, and you need an audience.
Have I mentioned that this is one of my absolute favourite human beings?
So it seems that’s what I’m doing now. Writing to an audience, albeit one that doesn’t exist yet, seeing as I have yet to announce my blog or make it public. Yet, still, the idea alone is comforting. The thought that somebody, somewhere might read through an entire entry without interruption, and discover in it some morsel of recognition that helps them to feel less alone in the world, just as I am feeling less alone by taking the time to lay these words down, is one that brings me great comfort indeed.
I’m looking forward to seeing where this takes me.
