I had an interesting conversation this morning on twitter, which honestly is not the best place to talk about things like art and creativity and insecurity. The limit of 140 characters means you can't really express much complexity in your thoughts and people resort to abbreviations like "ppl" and "u" and "&" which for someone like me is slightly maddening. But, a conversation was had and ideas were expressed despite the limitations of the mechanism.
This blog has been quiet. Not because I have writer's block or because I lack things to say. To the contrary, I have lot going on in my life that I could write about and I want to share. So why the silence? Well, sometimes it gets really hard to put yourself out there because when you write about your thoughts and ideas and god forbid your feelings, people judge you and they take potshots at you and worst of all they presume to know you. Which, is kind of the point if you are a blogger, right? You want to be known, or more to the point, you want your ideas to be understood. For someone like me there is no greater annoyance than to be misunderstood.
So, when I post in frustration about my own inability to make InWorlds work and it turns into a minor scuffle including nastygrams on twitter and a post on NWN that stayed up over the course of a weekend attracting the ire of devotes of that world? I shrink into myself and stop posting for a while because I think "I must really suck as a writer if people misunderstood my intent so" and "why bother to express myself if my words are just going to attract haters anyway." Its a strange mix of failure to communicate and insecurity in my own creative abilities with the result being a grand implosion and me standing around petting my Meeroos, wondering what the hell happened to my desire to write.
sighs.
But a blogger has to blog, you know? I have taken so many images I want to share and I have posts perking in my head about virtual art, collaborations, the small communities that grow up around sl musicians, the vibrant SL poetry world, and the ways in which the virtual world supports fledgling artists and creative types like me. This post is a small start on writing about what happens to sensitive souls who dare to live life out loud and how they find ways to overcome the fear of expressing themselves. I have much to say on this topic.
To be sure, daring to be a creative person is a contact sport. Occasionally you get a black eye, but the rewards are rich and outweigh the short term discomfort. I am working on learning how to step out of the way of the punches and letting them land, unconnected, beside me.
(Yes that is a picture I took just now of my right eye, which is a whole story in itself. Another blog post for another day, perhaps.)
~~~
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
Marianne Williamson
