When I Grow Up

Unfortunately for me, when I see that title, the Pussycat Dolls' latest hit song starts playing in my head…that isn't quite what I'm referring to. Or maybe it is…

Everyone dreams of being SOMETHING as a child, whether that thing is a professional bike rider (10-speed, not BMX), a babysitter, a bird, a lawyer, a psychiatrist, or a writer. (Note: these are all things I have wanted to be at one time or another.)

I started this blog because I've always got something in my head that wants out. It's therapeutic, freeing, cathartic, energizing, and (dare I say) fun to put my words out into the universe. As I write I hear snippets of teachers' voices saying things like "avoid cliché" and "consider your structure" and "who is your audience" and "find your own voice." What I want from this blog is to extend myself, to hear my own voice as I read, and to learn to captivate a reader. I want to explore topics to see if they can grow into something more or if they are dead in the water.

Lately, due to my distracting obsession with celebrities on Twitter, I've been keeping an eye on Diablo Cody. Her story thrills me—she seems to have always done what it is she wanted to do, without censorship. She has multiple higher education degrees, but she has worked as a stripper, just because it was interesting. She isn't afraid to write about something controversial—or rather, she doesn't consider anything controversial, because she's comfortable with herself. She seems to always have an idea in the works. Maybe that's because it is her job to write, but I'd like to think that any writer who wants to write should also always have some smidgens of stories on the back burner.

One of my favorite bloggers is Heather Armstrong at Dooce.com—Heather is another one who doesn't filter, and her posts are always interesting. She talks daily about her triumphs and her struggles, and isn't ever bashful about saying what she's really thinking.

I want to write that way—with abandon. Without concern for what the world thinks. The past 12 months have taken me a long way towards learning that what other people think doesn't really matter. The people who love me will love me no matter what I do, or what is done to me—sometimes all the more so for my inadequacies. The people who don't love me don't really matter; if someone can't accept me for being me, what do I want with them anyway? I'm trying to move in that direction, but my need for approval is always fighting me back the other way.

Part of my struggle is that I feel like I haven't had to struggle. I've had a middle-class, mid-western existence, parents happily married for 40 years (this year!), comfortable, safe relationships, minimal hardship. I've always wondered how interesting I can be if I don't have my own story, if I haven't experienced any of those challenges. Is it possible to be progressive and captivating in my writing when my own life seems so white bread?

It's callous to wish for trouble, isn't it? There are plenty of people in the universe who HAVE faced hard times—are facing them this very moment. I don't want to trivialize anyone else's experience by saying something like "I wish my life were more difficult." That's just a silly thought, but on some level, I'm jealous of someone who can pull from some raw emotion to document something, whether fact or fiction. My emotion has to be pulled from somewhere else, outside of experience, and therefore sometimes (okay, maybe most of the time, at least to me) feels false, or manufactured. I've always felt like my "hardships" were trivial, and therefore I should suck it up and quit feeling sorry for myself on those days where I feel gloomy.

I've added a new blog to my daily reading list—my friend the Dap Queen. It's a little risqué (at least for some portion of my readers) so proceed with caution if you find yourself uncomfortable with the idea of, for example, sex shops. I, however, cannot get enough of Dap Queen's writing style. It's raw, uninhibited, and thrilling. I think the girl could write a screen play that would rival Diablo's Juno, and I'm jealous. I love her turns of phrase, and that she isn't afraid of what a reader might be thinking. If you don't like it, you know what you can do with it.

Anyway, point of all this is…if I claim to want to write, for real—if that is what I truly want to be whenever I discover what a "grown-up" is—I need to take myself a little more seriously. I need to push my own boundaries, stretch the edges of my comfort zone. Maybe to do that I have to take it off-line at first, to flesh some things out, to find a topic and expand upon it.

How do you find yourself, internet? Where do you look for inspiration, and strength? How can you tell when you're speaking in your voice, and not someone else's?