Writing can be just for me
I can waste a lot of head space trying to drill down to the core purpose of writing. I’m not proud of it. Confession: Too often, I have deprived myself of the pleasure of capturing my thoughts on paper, simply because I didn’t have a good enough answer to the question, “But who is it for?”
Hot take: our writing doesn’t have to be for the consumption of others.
Quick back story: my brain has a bad habit shutting down my writing before I even get started. It decides I can’t spare the time. It’s not a worthy pursuit. There’s no profit in it. Nope, we will not be doing even a little bit of that today. Better luck next time.
I suffer from a scarcity mindset.
The belief system around scarcity was given to me by my white working class folks, in an American suburb, in the 80’s, for the purpose of maintaining and operating inside the hierarchy that sustains capitalism. (I don’t think my folks consciously knew this. Neither of them had writing practices. More about that soon) They taught me to believe resources are scarce. There isn’t enough and will never be enough, so hustle till you die. Beg, borrow and steal if you must. Just do whatever desperate thing is needed so that you and yours won’t suffer from not having just enough to get by.
Horrifying.
With this mindset, making time for the luxury of ‘writing for fun’ was never going to feel safe, let alone pleasurable. It made my deeper yearning to lean toward creation a violation of my own (terrifying) rules around safety and survival. I didn’t invent the rules but I also didn’t know I had the freedom to put them down and create ones that better served me and the world as I’d prefer to relate to it.
What if I believed there was plenty to go around and creation begets more creation? Who could I be if I believed that?
Enter writing practice and unexpected abundance.
Nothing has had a more profound impact on my lived experience than developing a writing practice. I don’t practice perfectly, but that isn’t the point. In finding a few spare minutes to devote to writing, with no financial motive, I actively shift my relationship to scarcity in other areas of my life. I disprove my own entrenched operating systems. Because, as I write I find the words do come when invited. I find a little time and attention does go a long way. I learn I can be wrong and survive. I witness myself shifting my own mind. I discover, when I am not limiting myself, my writing can take me anywhere. I can wander into wild worlds of fantasy or self soothing pun inventions. I can be songwriter for an afternoon. I can feel wonderfully free and entirely seen.
My only expectation for my writing is that I do it. I show up for what wants to come. I honor the part of me that still does things simply because it might be fun. There’s an added bonus, as my practice deepens, I find I can surprise myself. I can find myself again and again, being expressed in all kinds of ways, for the sheer pleasure of being known and sought after, even if the only one seeking is me.
I am building a relationship with the parts of me I wouldn’t have known, if I hadn’t taken the time to sit and hear what they had to say. As I welcome everything that comes forward, I start to get a better felt sense of safety and trust in me as a whole integrated person. I am less attached to external ways of being because I know who I am, what I am interested in, what I stand for and what brings me joy. Writing helps me be right with me.
In practicing my writing I honor all sides of my humanity and can take that radical acceptance out into the greater world. If that isn’t the antidote to scarcity mindset, I don’t know what is.
