Birthplaces

There are so many thoughts running around in my head that I don't know where to start and at 5:23 in the morning how much of it will come out coherently and how much will just be stream of consciousness gibberish.  I realized earlier today that within my stream of consciousness there are many different thoughts passing.  There is the critic and someone who is making a running commentary with a sense of humor and I've come to find...there always seems to be a song in my head.  Sometimes I have no clue what triggered this song as lately it has been old school 80s songs that are not the old school 80s songs you want to admit are stuck in your head.  I wonder what this would all look like if it could be recorded.  Here is a transcription A of what you've been thinking for the last 20 minutes.  It would probably look like gobbledygook...I guess this explains the concept behind Julie Cameron's Morning Pages to me.

Perhaps I should have started this post like a Bridget Jones chapter where I give you the stats of my current state.  The current state of my affairs is that it is early in the morning, my hopes of radically changing up my sleep schedule back to a nocturnal happening were dashed a few hours ago when I tossed and turned in bed for 45 minutes and then decided to just get up and surf the internet.  I'm still sick with a sore throat and feel drained of energy.  I'm hoping I don't drag and miss my flight in 6 hours.  One of the things I really hate is being exhausted on no sleep and being stuck at LaGuardia Airport....cause let me tell you there is no comfortable place to sit at that airport.  Plus my cousin recently told me there are mice there which shouldn't surprise me, but still I would rather not see them!  I saw one on my date last week at the restaurant I was taken to....I think that is enough for the time being.

So I spent the better part of the last few days sick and stuck at home.  Somehow in this time I actually managed to get some things done on my to do list.  Hurray!  I also spent a lot of time camped out at Ink on my fingers.  I haven't been keeping up with people's blogs or writing much on mine and so I went to catch up.  But somehow as I was there I decided to go back and read this blog from the beginning.  Something within me (my spirit, my soul, whatever you call it, the place within that I can't intellectualize) was pushing me to do this because I thought this is an example A of one woman's journey through struggle, change, fear, hope, etc.  I found myself more than once reading her writing, stepping away and thinking about my own fear of the unknown and how adamant I have been to hold steadfast to where I am and not move.  I realized how much I've been hiding in my own writing here.  There are posts here and there that I think access a deeper part of me, but for the most part I think I'm concerned about how I'm perceived, who reads this, etc.  More about this later.  I think Susannah's blog provides a beautiful example of one woman's struggle with confronting her fears, trusting her path and the Universe, and creating a road to the life of her dreams (as cheesy as that sounds)....except on her blog it is accompanied with gorgeous photographs!  I hope she publishes a book in the future of her words and images.

Something is happening.  I feel spent and drained, but something is happening.  Something has shifted.  I can't explain it.  All I know is that something has moved or maybe I've moved a little out of my own way.  I'm at step 1, but I want to sit and write here like I'm at step 10 if that makes any sense, but I'm not.  I'm interested to see how a healthy A on a normal sleep schedule does with this internal shift.

Reading Ink on my fingers has made me really think about the writing on my own blog and my own journey.  Why is it that all the blogs I'm drawn to are written by women with "creative" jobs (photographers, writers, painters, chefs)?  Why do I write here?  What is my purpose in doing this?  Is it to get people to read it, to get people to comment?  Is it to air my thoughts?  Is it to hook into a blogging community?  I don't have a strong direct answer to this question of why I write here.  I think in the past it may have been a little bit of each of these things.  But I see how all of that impacts what I really say here.  I think the best role this place can serve for me is as a place to write a little bit about this journey I'm on right now walking from a place full of fear of the unknown along a path as I figure out what it is I would like to do professionally, who it is I am and would like to develop into personally.  My therapist once told me that she believes that a blog is written for others to read it and there is some truth to this.  I could sit and write all these things in a journal, but I'm choosing to share some of what I'm walking through here in a version that obviously doesn't leave me brilliantly exposed.  I'm not ready yet to show my face or my full name or for certain people in my life who I feel are critical to know that I have a blog.  There is some magic in Blogland.  I don't know what it is, but I know that for me last year when I was depressed some other part of me, a part that I haven't been in touch with in a long time (if ever) went looking online for something that had color, something that was rich, something that touched and moved me.  In that search I found a few blogs that really caught me and have held me ever since.

So I don't know what this space will become.  I'm always concerned about coming across as whiny, ignorant, naive, etc., and therefore I think hesitate sometimes in what I say.  My hope today is that this space becomes a space for this place within me that seems to want a voice to express herself.

I'm standing at the beginning of a journey and I'm reminded of a line from a TV show called Class of 96 (a show that I seem to be the only viewer of as I have yet to meet anyone else who has ever heard of or watched this show) where the main character played by Jason Gedrick cheesily says in his voiceover at the end of an episode something about how he has two birthplaces, the first the place he was physically born and the second the place where he found out who he really was. :)

The YouTube video at the top of this post is Class of 96's opening.