I've been sporadic about my daily posting - I've been unclear about my purpose in writing. This blog started from a workshop where I was deeply engaged in a creative journey within a community and then continued through my planting of the seeds of a new community via The Outwork.
Somewhere along the line, I started speaking less personally, less directly, less vulnerably, and started to perform more. To push to present the kind of metaphors that I so dearly love as they arise from my experience. But taken out of context, they lose their humanity, and become pretension. I've been feeling self conscious about presenting my life more directly as I've become more aware of my image, my marketing, and my message.
McLuhan whole shtick in "The Medium is the Message" was that the characteristics of the medium ultimately conveys more over time than the individual messages presented through it. In this case, what I'm conveying isn't a particular metaphor, knowledge, or point, but rather a process and approach. I want that approach to be one of vulnerability and of using my own life as the material I transform into art. It's not about the art, it's about the transformation, and this is a process of documenting that transformation.
To those ends, I must let go of my desire to present an image of any kind, be it a metaphor, a work, or an identity. This isn't about sounding wise or looking cool, unless that's what I've been trying to do (and I have), in which case, write about that.
The daily post was an answer to a problem I had found within morning pages, the desire to share some artifact of my personal excavation that was still informal, unpretentious, and fairly transitory - but to do so publicly.
I have many friends that post regularly to social media, that share constantly about their lives. But these mediums are highly visual. The accompanying text is short and quippy. The medium constantly conveys a message of performative and attention grabbing voyeurism, regardless of the content presented.
In choosing the blog instead (and I continued to hate that word), I am choosing the medium of the written word, where I am encouraged to write freely and at length. The blogging platform I use, [Ghost][ghost.org], also lets me tag, organize, and set post visibility to create healthy boundaries to protect my more vulnerable processes. These are the processes I teach at The Outwork, and as always, I find again and again that I need my own teaching more than anymore else.
I must also let go of trying to please a readership (and I laugh, my readership is low). As my idea of who is reading has grown, I have been burdened with thoughts of presenting something that is useful and relevant rather than just what has been true for me.
This space and this process is for me, and it is precisely that commitment which I believe may make it valuable to others. Every lens distorts, but most of the lenses through which we look into the lives of others are more kaleidoscope than fisheye. To that end, vulnerability, banality, and brutal honesty in the task of self investigation is not only a necessarily tool, but a powerful message - my medium is my process, and my process is worth sharing. Your process is too.