Hello world: After a death, a rebirth

Photo: Pixabay

Thanks for visiting my blog.

To be perfectly honest, I tried launching it several months ago. It failed. As in, I wrote one post. Worst of all, upon re-reading that one post, I hated it. It was contrived. Forced. Like me trying to be somebody I'm not but wish I were.

[Queue up that song by Skee-Lo... I wish a was a little bit taller... I wish I was...]

Yeah, I was wishing to be someone other than me. But then I died. I mean, obviously metaphorically-speaking.

I died a kind of death of identity. Who I thought I had been becoming for years somehow no longer felt like the person I was nor the person I wanted to be. And yes, I was approaching midlife. So this was a midlife crisis. Amid a pandemic. Yikes.

So what to do?

I scrapped that old blog post -- and, in a way, I scrapped my old identity too. I was never going to fit into any of the molds that society seems to have precast and set up for us to choose from. I was going to have to go my own way. [Another song to queue up...]

Of course, I already had sensed this was the case when I came up with the basic gist of the idea for this blog: on the verge of meaning. I aim to write a little each day here to give me mental breathing room to act out in public but privately. To wear a kind of costume that hides my new emerging identity as much as my past identity. The point is not necessarily to hide who I am becoming -- but to give myself space to experience that becoming in a way that is simultaneously transparent for all to see and yet hidden for no one to see.

Only in this liminal space between public and private does art truly find its authenticity. At least, I think that's how my "art" can be authentic. My voice. Whether it be howling, screeching, or singing. Whether it be poetic, mundane, or profane. It'll be my voice, refracted across a prism of transformation and revelation.

So, hello world. I'm still here, but different.