Conversation Starter

Admissions of overinduldgence

         I’ve spent a couple of weeks now… obsessively indulging on this new world of blogs I’ve happened upon.  Of course blogs aren’t new, and they’re not really even new to me.  What’s new is this daily drive to eat up all the fascinating content I’m finding.  I read as much as I can about creativity and business and finances and writing and cooking and whatever else snags my attention at the moment.  The hours I’ve spent scrolling through beautifully presented, wittily written and authoritative sounding blog posts… that is what is fairly new.  Now, because all lovely obsessions must come to an end at some point, I’ve started to narrow down my daily followings to only those blogs that fill me with a sense of wonder or connection (rather than fill my head with dollar signs and my inbox with subscriptions). Partly because whenever I log that many hours in a row focused on a computer screen, my head starts to get scattered and overstimulated and my body screams with antsiness.

         But also… I have come to the conclusion that I don’t want to be a Freedom Fighter, or a meritocrat, or sell all my belongings to prove that I live an Untemplated life so that I can sell books and adspace and e-courses to help you learn how to live that Ridiculously Extraordinary lifestyle too.  I’m really not trying to knock those approaches, finding a marketable niche is just not my style and not something I’d want to focus on.  Amidst those blogs, the posts that have held my attention and lingered in my thoughts days after have been the ones where someone is able to stop holding up the sun and the moon and open up their experience a bit, for me to peek in on. They give me a chance to notice how they handle things like Avoidence, in order to get to the place where they are thriving.  In posts like The Failure Manifesto, where in a moment of honesty, she is less concerned with appearing wiser or more experienced, savvier or under control.  When people are willing to lay out their own moments of joy and pride and challenge and in between-ness so that maybe you or I or we both can explore and taste and reflect on their experience… and take with us what we may to integrate into our own process.

Backing up…

         I actually started looking at blogs in the past few weeks because of two friends.  One, who has started looking into a potential business and turned me on to some of the blogs above.  And one friend who has just moved from California to New York to continue blossoming as the incredible stage actress she is, but whom I will miss hugely and terribly because she remains one of the only people who can read my eyes from across a room, and with whom I have had some of my most important conversations with.  When we talked about blogging as a way to keep up with each other… I was more excited about her blogging… seeing as though she’s the one starting her new adventure, and mine, while constantly changing on a less national scale, will more or less continue on statically. So from my angle… and with my recent discoveries through other blogs, I’ve been thinking… what about blogging just to start conversation? Since it’s These Conversations that, over the years, that have become so necessary for my sanity.

         One of the first Douglas Coupland quotes I ever heard was when I was 16, filled with conflicting thoughts from some recent teenage drama, but refusing to talk about them with a good friend of mine for fear that they might burst through my tearducts in a very uncomposed moment.  He flipped through the book he was reading and just pointed,

It’s funny really… that a decade or so later I’ve just recently started to try and articulate this truth that I’ve always felt.  Funny too, that I named my blog Conversations before I’d fully developed the thought.  But really, I’m finding its a pretty basic truth for most people (Liz).  I learn through conversations.  I move forward with conversations.  I release and realize sometimes more fully through conversations than trying to be my own temple of self-reflection, because when I go to say something out loud… I’m suddenly extremely acutely and sometimes painfully aware of how much truth is in it… How smoothly it rolls of my tongue or if the words get choked back in my throat.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve made declarations to myself about my intentions or spun explanations that I truly believe are behind my action or inaction… and then made a little visit to my best now-living-in-New-York pal only to try and look her in the eye and say the same thing. The minute I try, I know the truth. Or the untruth that I’d been trying to turn into truth.

It’s really amazing.

         I think it’s wonderful actually, comforting in its own way. That although we may not need others to buy our groceries or walk us across the street or tie our shoes before we stand up, we still need that interaction and those conversations with friends and strangers, in order to provide the occasional reference point or reassuring gleam from a lamppost illuminating that fact that we all have fantastic, adventurous times, frighteningly blissful times, paralyzingly uninspired times and delectably slow-paced moments.  All of us. Different shades and shapes and emotional tints perhaps… evolving at a different pace and spurred by different events… But how else would we know that all these things we’re going through… all these crazy random thoughts we have… are quite a bit more collective than we might first assume.  We all know guru’s and experts have their place in all technological, spiritual and perhaps even personal development arenas… and that’s great, they can always be looked to for a little shot of inspiration.  But there’s just no substitute for the rolling, rambling bantering tangents of a good, no holds barred conversation, regardless of the topic.