Spending it All
Why create this at all?
Not really just to have a blog. But in essence, to share.
There’s a wide range of things that catch my curiosity and that interest me. Encountering these things, I’m held, captivated. And I always wonder if anyone else sees what i’m seeing. I look around to see if there’s anyone else at all who took notice. Hey, are you seeing this? There’s this impulse in me to just share these things and say “look! How can you not be excited by this?!”
I find that some of these things are important. I see their value and I want others to see them too. If i’m lucky, they’d get it. At the bottom of it, I guess it’s me wanting to be understood, or rather, me testing to see if others can see things in the same light. It’s me wanting to connect and be connected. Maybe i’m also looking to find the tribe in which I fit in, in which people share the same passions, values, curiosities.
At the very least, I just want to put it out there. For it to just exist, regardless if anyone sees them or not (but of course deep down I hope they do get seen). These things that catch my interest, they move and enthuse me. Sometimes, overwhelmingly so. At those times the feeling just gets outside of myself and I don’t know where to put it.
So I write.
Annie Dillard said: ” You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment…” Seems fitting for what I would be doing. From the same piece she advised, when it comes to writing, to hold nothing back:
“One of the few things I know about writing is this: Spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Don’t hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The very impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful; it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.”
Interesting enough, parts of this advice, if not the whole, can be applied to any creative endeavor (and I mean this in the broadest sense). This generosity of spirit is what I am aiming for. And this blog is one way for me to achieve it.
So here I am, spending it all.
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