Since we are confined to our homes because of COVID, and since I don’t currently have a job, I’ve been writing a lot. I have been feeling more articulate and a bigger pull to put pen to paper (or whatever the digital equivalent is) than I ever have before. I’m not a big journal-er, nor have I ever felt like my writing is particularly good. But something about those two things has shifted. And I find myself every once in a while, writing something I think is important to share. Not worth sharing, but important to. About my own journey shedding my socialization and building new understandings of myself and the world. I made a post on my instagram asking people if 1. anyone read blogs and 2. if anyone would read mine. I left it alone, anxiously awaiting my community’s response. And then I realized that I had already made a judgement about starting a blog. That potentially, other people think it’s stupid. That my writing was only worth sharing if pre-approved by the social media collective. That what other people thought of my desire to write and share is a more important motive than just wanting to. Trusting that what is inside my head has value. I realized this is exactly the kind of restriction on myself that I am trying to unlearn. This idea that somehow I am different from any other writer. Yes that person deserves to take up space in the internet but nooottt mmmeeeee, tiny insignificant undeserving me.
I thought about the number of people who shared their thoughts and work whether or not someone told them they should. Without permission from anyone but themselves. I thought about if all the people whose work and words have touched me deeply and changed me and helped me become the person I am said to themselves “no, that’s silly, not enough people said ‘yeah do it!’ so I won’t." The first person to talk about racial imposter syndrome, or devised theatre, or queerness, or intersectionality, or generational trauma, or deep frying ice cream. The first person to speak those things into existence, did they have overwhelming permission? I think probably not.
So, I’m starting a blog. Because I’m a grown ass woman, and I do what I want.