Earlier, I wrote about Yom Kippur in a post called Judgment Day. My thoughts on Yom Kippur this year were inspired by two women I’ve never met; bloggers who write at The Individual Voice (Tiv) and Writing Under a Pseudonym (Jade). Most years, I think about Yom Kippur as I do Ash Wednesday–it’s a sober day during which people who aren’t observant ought to tiptoe around out of respect for those who are.
This year I had different thoughts, which were expanded even more when I read this from Tiv yesterday:
I have known that deep in my bones all my life even with all the holy rollers around me faithfully praying to God. [. . .] And I need some time to rethink why I am writing this blog and if I want to keep going in this memoir direction or take a dramatic u-turn into a book blog and stop turning myself publicly inside out like Kafka’s The Hunger Artist. — “Tiv,” author of The Individual Voice
How well I understand the doubt expressed here by the author of The Individual Voice. On the one hand, as psychologists and writers and other types of developing human beings, we want to become whole, and wholeness requires authenticity, honesty, integrity, transparency, and so on. On the other hand, when we are authentic, honest, and truthful about our experiences, ideas, thoughts, and feelings, we feel the shame of oddness. We know we don’t quite fit in–or, we fit in, but we don’t always know it. Our part in the big whole of it all may be or seem singular. We don’t know very many others, or even any others, who quite “get” who we are, and we think that this somehow translates into personal meaninglessness.
I think about blogging or writing my personal nonfiction as being like a roller coaster ride. As I mount upward on my own words and tale-telling, I gain courage and excitement. When I aptly describe what happened, how I felt, what I thought, and what I (tentatively) concluded by finally writing about it, I am in the car at the pinnacle of the roller coaster, wide-eyed with amazement at the drop right ahead of me. I hit “publish,” or I say whatever I’m going to say (if I’m speaking), or I drop the manuscript into the mail or hit “send,” and suddenly I’m screaming my way down to the bottom. Will I survive? Will I be thrown out of the car? Will I have heart failure, lose a lung screaming, or puke on the guy next to me?
It’s a big WHOOSH, for sure!
As I blog, I admire more and more those souls who have been courageous enough to write actual memoirs, or to publish their diaries. Anne Morrow Lindbergh comes to mind–an introverted, sometimes depressed, and always brilliant woman who lived her life in the shadow of larger-than-life Lindy; her diaries are wonderful. I have them all and make it a point to read them through every decade or so. She’s one among many who have been brave and bared their souls to the world.
