“Are you still writing?” she asks me at girls’ night, without looking up.
“Of course, yeah.”
“Aww, good!”
It’s a coo more than it is a response. Not condescending, just conversational. She genuinely cares when adding, “On your blog?”
“Yep.”
“Aww, you should share when you post.”
I wonder, as I type this out, if she’ll check this site and recognize our exact exchange. But the thing is, I know she won’t.
And honestly, I prefer it that way.
I tell the girls, “My blog is too wistful to consistently share. I feel like anyone who knows me would get the wrong idea about how I think, who I am.”
They nod comfortingly in quiet understanding.
I imagine them thinking: yeah, you seem crazy.
Or a less (more?) harsh: yeah, we don’t actually care.
Or the truest: feelings make us uncomfortable.
Really, I’ve learned it’s best not to fill in the blanks of what people think.
What makes me write wistfully? I think about it as I drive to work, noticing the smooth pistachio-colored rooftop of a restaurant that closed last month.
Is it the clenching and unclenching of my jaw while an Ariana Grande song airily plays in the elevator of the EMC2? I stood next to a robot in a tux named Cleo, delivering amenities to a room. My workout clothes clinging to clammy skin. The (vain) urge to take a selfie surrounded by foggy mirrors, until my eyes (self-consciously) dart up to a security camera. The perfumed cloud (jasmine, green tea, maybe sandalwood) of that hotel follows me.
Is it the (often ignored) embarrassment of being a writer who is aimless? The shame of being seen, or worse, discovered wanting. Inevitably, I reach a point where I want to delete everything. I have before.
But the mind flickers.
Diane Keaton is dead, and like many people, I’m sad.
My algorithm floods with tributes: how she called herself a late bloomer despite brilliance and accolades and early fame. She wanted to stay hidden. Yet she invited the most striking reflections. “Look. Notice things.” she says with excitement, during an interview, “we must always look and be curious. Everything is so fascinating!”
The next morning I get a text from one of the five of us sitting around that table when my blog came up:
“Hi, it was so nice to see you. You are gorgeous inside and out!!!”
My heart lights up with its own buzzing curiosity, because she is, too. But I don’t know what prompted that small burst of adoration my way.
When I’m observing, or present, lively, loving, happy, and genuinely interested in the lives around me, I feel it too.
Instead of being eternally shy about who I am in this space (despite always pressing “Publish”), well…
“I wish I had put myself out there a little bit more and experienced people more instead of protecting myself.”
(Daily Writing 101)
“and I’m calm in that loop” title stolen from Will Wiesenfeld.