When I went out East in August, I was beginning to feel lighter.
I felt invisible at BlogHer, but that was mainly because you have to work so hard to be visible at BlogHer, and I’m not much good at doing that on my own behalf. Having my son in tow and my liveblogging shifts, I didn’t have much energy for it. Meanwhile, my email inbox and east coast conversations bustled with unexpected work possibilities — things to consider or do when I got home and Declan started going to school full time. I was looking forward to this hard and glorious autumn full of work and schedules and cool air and time for coffee with friends during the day and possibilities.
But when I came home and started following up, my emails went out like arrows, got stuck in the wall behind the people I was trying to reach and weren’t returned. Or minds were changed. I searched for new possibilities and found some really promising ones, but the same thing happened. It’s been frustrating. The more I try to advance, the more I feel like I’ve been checkmated.
So I’ve been doing invisible things. Like spending time in places I usually drive past with the windows closed. Places that have been invisible to me. I’ve carried household things my mom or friends didn’t want to an apartment complex that used to be another blur on the side of freeway. Now it’s home to a friend who is restarting his life with little more than what people have seen fit to give him.
I’ve sat next to a hospital bed, trying to keep an ear on the medical staff as they tended to a person who told me she loved me the first day we met. Another person who has shown me that you can lose everything, that your whole life can turn over, and you can come out of it better than you were before.
I’ve spent time inside of an urban church so humble you could barely distinguish it from an old used furniture shop. I sat on one of its folding chairs and stared at its plastic purple flowers. Just like the old urban church that is now a Buddhist temple that I frequent, I have found that it’s a place of extraordinary grace.
And there’s so little I can say here beyond that about these things, which are the things I can feel in my chest the most right now, I wonder that I should be writing here anymore at all.
Copyright Tracy Zollinger Turner, Tinymantras.com, 2010.
I am always sad when a blogger I love thinks about hanging up her hat but I also think that when the blog is in the way of other good things it's good to step away from it. But leave it because you may come back ready to blog here again. Thinking of you!!
I generally am a lurker–I read your work via RSS. But, oh…I have felt very similarly.
Do remember though, that the invisible things are those things that make what you write all the more meaningful. Those experiences shape the woman and the writer that you are–and that you share with your readers.
You offer a perspective that I really appreciate.
You are a gifted writer whose words always resonate and awaken- You have written all your life and you will continue to write- whatever the medium.