If God is an Artist
who paints mushrooms just for fun,
and we are created in God’s image,
it seems to me we shouldn’t have so much trouble believing (and acting like)
we are artists.
(And don’t even get me started on bird songs, or the dances of schools of fish, or…)
Note: All photos taken within approx. 100 feet of our campsite on a recent canoe trip. And this was only a sampling!
Warning: This post is mostly just me thinking aloud. Feel free to ignore it if you get easily annoyed with the inner angst of an over-thinker.
I’ll admit it – I’ve been agonizing about what the big “next step” will look like once I walk away from my day job. No, the agony has not been about second-guessing my decision – I’m pretty confident it’s the right choice – but rather it’s about “what am I going to put out into the world once I have to be responsible for marketing MYSELF rather than a non-profit or government organization”.
At the heart of this agonizing is a question about whether to be a generalist or a specialist. I have a lot of skills that I think are marketable – writing, communications planning & marketing & public relations, media relations, creativity, facilitation, leadership development, teaching, storytelling, global thinking, travel, synthesizing information… and that’s where I get a little bogged down. I LIKE to do a lot of things and have a lot of variety in my life. That’s why I’ve been happy in this job because it has offered me opportunity to grow in my leadership, do lots of creative writing and communicating, travel to fascinating places in the world, do story-gathering and photography, advise people on how to effectively communicate their message, etc., etc.
So part of me thinks I should just start marketing myself as a generalist who’ll do all of these things, and be kind to you while I’m at it.
BUT… I’m a little nervous that being too much of a generalist just waters down what I want to do in the world AND gives people the idea that I’m a “jack of all trades and master of none” and that I won’t really do a bang-up job of whatever it is they consider hiring me to do. So then I try to synthesize all of these things and come up with some kind of well-rounded statement like “I’ll help you use your personal and organizational stories and strengths to transform your leadership and impact”. Hmmm…. blah.
The thing is, the skills that I think will get me jobs (ie. INCOME), are not necessarily the things I want to do a lot of. Corporate communications, for example. I can write a bang-up press release or produce a lovely annual report, but please don’t make me do that ad nauseum! On the other hand, if you want to hire me to go to Zimbabwe to visit your project site to take pictures and gather stories so that you can better communicate what your organization does, I AM SO THERE!
And then there’s this other piece that keeps nagging at me like a pesky child who won’t stop showing you pictures of delectable chocolate until you take her to 7-11 for a chocolate bar (like my smart little manipulater did the other night). Sophia Leadership. THAT feels like a real calling and something I really feel like I need to put out into the world. It’s needed – I know it is. It’s the gap that I never fully found in my thirteen years of leadership – a safe space for leaders who want to explore their feminine wisdom (intuitive thinking, creativity, spirituality, comfort with ambiguity, embodiment, etc.). Despite the many times when my fear gremlin tries to convince me that I’m not qualified to be a leadership consultant or that there isn’t enough of a market for it or I’ll kill my other chances of making an income if I focus too much on that, I KNOW deep in my heart that this is a calling I’m not supposed to take lightly.
And then… well, then my mind starts to throw all kinds of other doubts and questions on the table. Should it really be just about leadership? What if that alienates the people who SHOULD recognize that they are leaders (the artists, stay-at-h0me moms, administrative assistants, dancers, etc., etc.) but are afraid of that word? Maybe it should be something like “Sophia Rises” to express more of the emerging quality of feminine wisdom in a world that needs much more of it, without attaching it just to leadership? And… should I really call it “Sophia”? Won’t that confuse people who don’t understand that Sophia = Wisdom and who think it’s my first name? Oy veh.
As Marianne Elliot said so eloquently, “I’m learning to trust that the work I’m here to do is bigger than me.” Somehow it feels like the Sophia work is bigger than me and it’s the direction I need to place my energy. I expect that (at least at first) it won’t be the only thing that I do, and really, I think if I do it right, all of those things can be incorporated into the Sophia work.
The lovely thing is that this thinking work is not really stressing me out, despite the use of the word “agonizing”. To some degree, I thrive on change and innovation, and this is just the kind of thing that gives me a buzz. So I’ll happily keep thinking and overthinking and praying and meditating about this thing for awhile, and at some point, perhaps the path will be clear.
If you have any wisdom on the subject, feel free to share it. I’d be especially interested in hearing about what you think my “essence” or”strength” is – what is the quality that shines from this blog that you think people need more of?
Quite awhile ago, I introduced this thing called the Fumbling for Words Writers’ Club. And then life got a little wacky and I found myself treading water just to stay afloat. Before you know it, the Writers’ Club went the way of the dodo bird.
Lately, though, several things have happened that helped convince me to revive that sad little dodo bird. A few people showed up on the Writers’ Club page expressing interest, I got hired to be a bonafide writing teacher, and a couple of friends asked me for writing advice. Okay, so… I get the message… writing advice is one of those things I’m SUPPOSED to share rather than keep it to myself.
The piece of advice that has been closest to my heart lately – the piece that I shared with the friend who asked me for feedback on her blog and the one who asked me to critique the first draft of her memoir – is this…
This is especially true for blogs, memoirs, personal essays, etc. Nobody wants to read your story if there is nothing unique about the voice it’s written in. Nobody wants to read a perfectly polished memoir that has no heart. If you want to write well, you have to be prepared to give away a piece of your heart.
As a professional communicator, I’ve done a lot of writing from other people’s voices (speeches, “quoting” the experts for news releases and articles, etc.), so sometimes it’s hard to remember what my own voice is. That’s part of the reason I blog – to remind myself.
How do you find your authentic voice? Practice, practice, practice. That’s the bottom line. You won’t find it if you don’t commit to it. Shitty first drafts, mediocre second drafts, third, fourth… you get the picture. It takes work. And a healthy dose of blood, sweat, and tears.
Here are a few tips to take with you as you practice:
1. Forget what your grammar school teacher taught you. Well, that’s not entirely true – remember it, but then ignore it. A good writer knows the rules, but is very adept at breaking them. A good grammar teacher would never let you get away with starting a sentence with “but” or “and”, for example. But that’s just what I’m suggesting you do. Your writing has to flow in a natural way that feels right for you, not your grammar school teacher. If grammar makes it feel too formal and stilted, then work around the rules. (I know, I know… it can be HARD to break the rules for those of us who are natural rule-followers! Just ask my daughters about how laborious my text messages are because I actually spell things out and use punctuation!)
2. Say shit if your mouth is full of it. If you like spicy language or clever idioms, use them, damn it! (But not too much, please. They get old after awhile.) Your writing has to reflect a piece of you, so let the reader see the way you would talk if you were telling them a story. Don’t polish too much. (That doesn’t mean “don’t edit”, it just means “don’t take the personality out of it when you’re editing”.)
3. Be as vulnerable as you can be. This is really, really important. If you want to be authentic, you have to admit some of the tough stuff – like what makes you cry, how you feel when you look in the mirror, and how much it hurts when a friend betrays you. It even means showing your dark side – like the petty things you do for revenge, for example. You don’t have to spill every detail (it’s still important to protect people we love, for example), but the reader needs to know that you are REAL and human and that life sucks sometimes. If your writing sounds like your therapist’s analysis of a situation rather than what’s really going on in your gut, rewrite!
4. Throw away all of the flowery words. Oh I KNOW how much you want to show off your big vocabulary and your really smart analysis of a situation, but DON’T. Use simple, accessible language. Give the reader an easy entry point. If they have to run for a dictionary, they’ll probably forget to come back. That doesn’t mean you should assume your readers are stupid (they’re not), but don’t try to act like you’re smarter than they are. Treat it like a conversation and write like you would speak. (And if you’re a professor and you normally use big flowery words, then PLEASE dumb it down for the rest of us!)
5. Pick a reader and write for him/her. Don’t try to please everyone, because that’s when your writing will become bland. It happens to me all the time – when I start to think of the broad range of people who read my blog (friends, family, work colleagues, strangers), I start to freeze up because I get worried how different people will intepret it. If it helps, picture one of your favourite people reading your blog/book/essay. Even better – write for yourself. Write to make your primary reader – YOU – happy, and forget about everyone else. Practice being a good reader and give yourself constructive feedback.
6. Read what you’ve written out loud. There has to be a smooth, even flow to your writing, so pretend you’re at a public reading and read it out loud. If it feels choppy and uneven, rewrite it. If you can’t put your personality and your own intonation into it when you read it, change it. If it sounds like a speech a politician might give, or something your grammar school teacher would have written… ummm… ditch that baby and start over again!
And now for a little of that practice…
Tell a story to your best friend. Think of something that happened yesterday or last week (or make something up) that made you laugh or cry, and then pretend you’re sitting down over a steamy chai latte telling your favourite person all about it. Use the words, phrases, and tone that you would use if you were actually speaking. Be honest, vulnerable, and a little messy. If you want, turn it into a dialogue with your friend’s response as part of it.
If you want to play along, feel free to add your piece to the comments, or put it in your blog and then make sure to tell us about it here so that we can visit.
For many years
I searched for wisdom.
I read endless books,
asked many wise teachers
took more courses than I can remember.
I turned to my father, my mother, my brothers, my sister.
I gathered friends and colleagues.
“Do you have wisdom?”
I asked of the sages, the philosophers, the saints.
“Can I have a piece of what you have?”
I begged of the writers, the teachers, the bloggers.
I gathered it all like a desperate hoarder,
clutching at pieces of whatever I could find.
Praying they wouldn’t slip away
like bugs scampering away from an overturned rock.
And like a harvester,
I winnowed and sifted the good from the bad.
I turned to the wilderness,
and for long days I searched there,
among the trees, the frogs, the rocks,
“Is wisdom stored in you?”
I asked them all.
“Come sit with me,” said the rock.
“Just sit. Stop searching and rest for awhile.”
“But I have work to do,” said I. “Wisdom still needs to be found.”
“Sitting helps,” said the frog. “Just try it.”
And so I tried to sit.
But my body was restless, yearning to move.
To turn over one more rock, to beg of one more sage.
My mind ached at all that I was missing.
“There’s a book I haven’t read!” I cried.
“I must go!”
My heart cried out for more conversation.
“There’s a sage I haven’t talked to! Surely she will know the way!”
The tree sighed.
“Sit,” she said. “Rest from your endless gathering.”
And so I sat.
And sat.
And sat.
And waited.
And prayed.
I tried to get up again and again, to carry on with the search.
But the rocks, trees, frogs, and rivers pleaded with me.
“Sit.”
And slowly, with the morning sun poking over the horizon,
wisdom appeared where I’d forgotten to look for it.
Deep in the places God had buried it so deep I didn’t think to look.
In my mind, my soul, my heart, my body.
Wisdom was there all along.
Once upon a time there was a book.
It was a very special book, with a pretty pink cover,
and lots of pretty pages where people could write things, glue things, or paint things.
This book had only one pupose in life –
to remind people of all of the reasons they had to be happy.
Because of that, they called her
(All here friends called her HB for short.)
HB was a globe trotter.
She loved to fly from city to city,
meeting people everywhere she went and reminding them
of all the happy stories they had in their memory banks.
HB didn’t mind if people were sad once in awhile – she knew that sadness was an important part of life –
but HB wanted people to remember that happiness was always there, under the surface, waiting to be found again.
One day, HB arrived in a Canadian city named Winnipeg.
HB was very excited about her next adventure.
She was going on a CANOE TRIP with a new group of friends!
Packed safely in a dry-bag (HB didn’t want to get wet and soggy if she got dropped in a lake),
she traveled by van, by canoe, and by foot
to a beautiful place on Lake Manoman where her new friends set up camp
and let her sleep in a tent for the first time in her life!
HB loved traveling with her new friends because they did a lot of laughing – even when it rained!
She was especially fond of the evenings when the seven women would sit around a campfire
and she would hear all about the stories of their lives.
She heard about their children, their husbands, their jobs, and about all of the things
that filled these women’s lives with both happiness and sadness.
It was all very good, especially when HB got passed around the circle
and got to meet these special women one-on-one.
The whole weekend was exciting for HB…
but there was one moment when HB was happiest of all.
HB was carried to the beach and… while she sat quietly on the rock…
the women, who were giggling and a little self-conscious,
took off their clothes and went
What made HB especially happy at this moment was that
these women decided that they weren’t going to care if they were fat, skinny, lopsided, hairy, jiggling with cellulite, or sporting big boobs or small (or even surgically altered) –
at this moment – far away from any eyes other than those of these lovely women whom they trusted –
they were all FREE and comfortable in their bodies
and HAPPY!
(HB even heard one of them say she felt like she was safe and fresh in a womb.)
Soon after that, HB, carrying a picture of that moment with her, set off on her next adventure.
*Note: This is my contribution to the Happy Book Mailaround.