The Unwritten Book
I have a couple of friends who are surprised about some of my life situations that crop up randomly in conversation. We've been friends for just over a decade so maybe they think they should know all of these things about me by now. For example, me, "One time when I was about six years old a kid staying in our front yard campground ripped the shirt I had made all by myself off of my body. I was humiliated and so I have never sewn clothes for myself ever again. The end."
Friend, "What!?" Me, "What?!" Friend, "What!?" Me, "WHAT?!" Friend, "You had a campground in your yard!?" Me, "Yeah." Friend, hunches over little device and punches at it with her thumbs until a message is relayed to our other friend, who also doesn't know everything about me, asking if she knows of this childhood campground situation. Nope.
I have a different friend who pulls this same revelation act on me, except her new information is interesting and amazing. Me, "So, how do you know how to tie your shoes so perfectly?" Her, "Well, when I was the CEO of that Fortune 500 tech company back when I lived in San Fran, I was invited to Richard Branson's island where I connected with the head cabana attendant who had accomplished becoming the world's youngest Eagle Scout and really knew how to wield a rope." Me, "Oh."
The difference between my info and my friend's is that mine is just stuff that has happened to me throughout my protracted life situation whereas my friend's unknowns turn out to be amazing accomplishments she has made happen during her young life. Well, today is my day to start making things happen for me instead of relying on the currents of life to just, kind of, you know, push me along any which way. But first, I need to rest up for such grandiosity... so tomorrow it might be.
What compels one person to relentlessly, brazenly and incessantly pursue a passion his or her whole, entire, amazing life while another finds any excuse to hide under that heavy rock of "Who me? Why now?Lookoverthere!" I fit into the latter situation and I feel dammed ashamed about it every day. I've wanted to write a book since I was twenty years old, I even kept a notebook and wrote down what I'd write my book about, alas, never to forge ahead and actually write the book. Who am I to think I can write, I only took one creative writing class in college from a jeans and cowboy boots wearing professor. At a university, mind you, that houses THE Iowa Writer's Workshop. Looking back I feel as though we were two ships passing in the drunken night, I stumbled right past the bounty of writing classes as I pretended that it hadn't crossed my mind that I could actually be a writer. What if I wrote and someone saw me, no, I mean really took a long, deep look and witnessed my being? What if, gasp, they didn't like what they saw? Hey, look over there...a squirrel!
This book I didn't write twenty some years ago will never, ever exist. I'm curious about my younger book; what it would have revealed about that formative time of my life. How sophomoric my debut novel would have sounded and let's be honest, how embarrassing it would have been. Thank God I didn't put myself through the agony of that judgement. Then the next book, it would have been much more mature than that initial rag I tried to write. But the third, ooh boy, I got a little too big for my britches with that one, a real highfalutin piece. Ugh. Oh, but my most recent book would have been a real crowd pleaser that everyone would have read then they would have completely seen and loved me soooo much. Critics would have thrown phrases around like "A masterpiece of hilarity...", "Not since David Sedaris has anyone written about everyday life with such beguilement..." "Heather Leigh brazenly naked; what's not to adore?" But alas, here I sit under my somewhat uncomfortable fear rock accompanied by a big, scary spider, a rolled up sow bug, a few creepy millipedes and an earwig that keeps prodding me with its disgusting little pincer.
Well, I didn't write it and there's no use beating myself up any more. That's just another tactic to not write. Now I realize that it's none of my business what someone else thinks about me or my writing. I'm not doing it for them, I'm doing it because I need to. There have been countless times I've wished and tried to manifest my "life's passion" as I stumbled upon a really nice, yet mostly unused, camera, a company I started in my basement and continued building for thirteen years, a backyard chicken and beekeeping hobby, a baby and a lot of old, tattered vision boards. These things have been part of my path in life and I'm not saying they're failed passions (especially the baby, and that's a different story), but they haven't brought me out from under my rock. Will writing a book be the situation that frees me from my fears? Perhaps. Probably not. I don't know and won't until I try it.
As I gradually tire of earwig pincers I inch my way out, one life situation at a time.
"I think it's terribly dangerous, as an artist, to fulfill other people's expectations." -David Bowie