Am i the coconut chocolate?

You wouldn’t think that simply writing words on a page could be so stressful.

There I did it. The first sentence of my new writing journey…check.

Ok, that wasn’t so bad.

Actually it has taken me years to get that first sentence out, so…maybe it was so bad? Why has it taken me years? That is a great question…the answer being so complex that it has taken me years to even start trying.

But…I’m finally at the point where I can’t not try. I know you aren’t supposed to use double negatives but I’m brand new so cut me some slack ok?

I find that every inch of me is oozing with desire to get the words out of my head and on to paper (or let’s be honest…the stark white screen that I spend way too much time looking at), so there is no better time than now, 7:03pm on a Monday afternoon, hiding in my bedroom because a stray dog made his way on to my porch about an hour ago and won’t leave. He’s driving my dogs nuts so we are hiding in the bedroom until his owner comes and finds him. Thank goodness for neighborhood facebook posts.

Writing is something I have loved my whole life. I recently found the first “book” I ever wrote in grade school as well as some papers I wrote in college. They stopped me in my tracks, everything else I had to do quickly fading away. I sat on the floor reading them, remembering how much I enjoyed fitting the words together into sentences like a puzzle.

I find so much joy in communicating the thoughts that swirl around in my head all day long in a way that others can relate to. I’ve been writing in some capacity for as long as I can remember. I was the nerd who couldn’t wait to write research papers in college. After focusing on my career for a while, I started a personal/lifestyle blog in 2011 right after I got married and then transitioned into blogging for my business when I started that in 2013. That has since faded a bit, and I have done any personal writing in a little over 5 years.

I’ve always wanted to write a book but struggled with what I want to write a book about. I’m not interested in writing fiction and I don’t feel like I know enough about any one particular subject to write a whole book about it.

Except for me. I know myself well enough to write a book about so that’s what I have decided to do.

But here’s the thing. I haven’t really done a lot of writing. Like what does that even mean?

I’ve been in the small business world for a long time. I was in the blogging world for a while. I have no idea what the writing world is like. Are people nice there? Is it cutthroat and merciless? I’m not really interested in making a full time income from writing, at least not anytime soon…is that allowed? Can you just write for pleasure or should I be focused on writing assignments or getting paid?

Honestly I feel stuck. I don’t know who I am writing too. The business side of me is so obsessed with thinking through your “ideal client” and “audience” and staying focused on your message. I have no idea who I am writing to or what I want to tell them. Not in like a broad sense anyway.

I would like to talk about my life experiences and how they have shaped me even though I feel like my life thus far has been pretty vanilla. I haven’t experienced any major trauma. For the most part, my life has been pretty ordinary and relatively pleasant. Sure, I’ve had some tough times and have experienced sadness, rejection, heartache etc…but when it really comes down to it…ordinary is the best way to describe it.

So next, of course, comes the feelings of inadequacy. Who wants to read about some ordinary girl who hasn’t overcome any major obstacles or survived some horrible trauma? Aren’t we all looking for the best and most unique stories? Don’t we all want to read about people who have dealt with and overcome much in their life and accomplished great things?

Or is there value in reading the words someone cared enough to think about, write down, edit, rewrite and eventually publish? Throughout history, humans have placed value on communication without speaking. Whether through hieroglyphics, the invention of the printing press, articles, books (of course) tweets, blogs etc… Transferring text on to something suggests a desire for permanence. And that desire for permanence communicates…value.

I still value reading and I know millions of other people do as well. There is no shortage of books out there. Have you been to a library or a bookstore lately? Sometimes I drift through the stacks wondering about the stories behind every single name listed as the author on a book jacket.

What drove them to write those words down? What is their story? Why this subject? Did they feel ordinary and irrelevant? What made them press forward to make the thing that I, in this exact moment am looking at and holding inside my hands at the Barnes and Noble? Did they think about me when they wrote it? Who did they think about? Were they worried about what their family and friends would think about the words they wrote down? The feelings they shared?

This brings me to the biggest stumbling block I have encountered regarding my new writing journey - being misunderstood.

Writing feels to me like one of the most vulnerable things you can ever do. It’s like sharing your deepest thoughts on a giant billboard for everyone to see. Maybe it’s a friend walking by, maybe its a complete stranger, but either way you don’t have control over who sees it and you can’t explain things to them if they misunderstand or disagree with what you are trying to say.

And really, when it comes down to it, it’s not the strangers I’m worried about.

It’s the people in my life who are acquaintances, bordering on friends who think they know me. Maybe they know part of me. Maybe they know me from high school, or college or one of the many jobs I have had. Maybe they know me from church or from working with me in my business. They know a part of me, but not the all of me.

Our social media obsessed world lies to us and tells us that we know people we actually have very little actual interaction with. We’ve all seen the outrage when a social media influencer shares something more personal that falls on one side of a divide and the comments start rolling in….

“I can’t believe you would do/support/talk about ____!! I thought I knew you, but now I have to stop following you because this one thing you shared means I can no longer connect with you the way I wanted to in our mostly one sided relationship.”

Yeah, that sounds weird and not normal because it’s weird and not normal, but it’s a part of the world we live in right now, no matter how absurd.

It’s similar to biting into a creamy chocolate expecting buttery soft salted caramel…and getting gross coconut filling instead.

(If you love coconut and you are utterly offended by my disgust…go ahead and unfollow now…lots of coconut hate will be happening around here.)

Biting into a mystery chocolate, not knowing what to expect and getting something you don’t like isn’t nearly as bad as expecting something you really like and then getting something that makes you want to hurl. The expectation alters your experience.

This is why writing feels so vulnerable to me.

What if I am someones coconut chocolate?

What if family, friends, acquaintances read my words, thinking they know what to expect from me and get something totally different? Something they never saw coming? Something that makes them want to immediately spit out that bite, wipe their tongue and drink a giant glass of water to get rid of the taste?

I really, really, really dislike the thought of that.

Not because I want to be a people pleaser or am afraid of offending or upsetting someone, it’s more based in the fact that we are living in a time when we are inundated with information. So much so, we aren’t able to process it, and the little we can process, we probably don’t process well because we are so distracted.

We breeze past things. We assume we are being lied to, taken advantage of, or manipulated. We don’t take time to fully read, listen, communicate and connect. Social media has us trained to do the opposite. Swipe, scroll, like, rage comment, ignore, assume, unfollow, exit.

It’s exhausting and it’s lonely.

Writing is my small step to combat the exhaustion and the loneliness. I’m taking the risk that you might take a bite, gag and spit because it wasn’t what you were expecting. Maybe you put that chocolate down and then throw the entire box away in disgust. Maybe.

Or maybe, just maybe, you root around and take a few more bites of other pieces to see if there is something, anything in the box you can connect with. It might take a little bit more time than it does to just throw the whole box out, but I’m guessing it might be worth the effort.

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