When something begins to consume you, the best option is to let it all out. If you are consumed by anger, bury your head in a pillow and scream your head out. If you are consumed by the hurt of a betrayal, you have two options, confront the person who betrayed you and let it go, or bury your head in a pillow and cry your heart out. If you are consumed by self-doubt, as I am right now, tell someone, and if there is no one around to listen, just put it out there, the cosmic energy will take it somewhere.
I saw the movie Julie and Julia last night, and I loved it. A simple story of a lady in the early 1940s, the wife of a diplomat, moving countries and continents, searching for something to do that would define her. She falls in love with Paris and French food. She wants to write a cook book, taking French cooking to the American world. Her part of the story traces her travails trying to get published. A young woman in the early 2000s, with a lackluster career and a half-written novel without a publisher, wants to find a definition of her own life, something that she can wake up to happily in the morning and decides to embark on a Julie/ Julia project. She starts a blog, that runs for a year, as she cooks every recipe in Julia Child's 'Mastering the Art of French Cooking'. Her blog is an instant success and she is covered by the NY Times, gets multiple calls from agents who want to work with her on a book. And everything ends happily ever after.
So it's got writing a book, blogging and following your dreams. And I wonder, what is the point of writing here, unless I know someone is reading it. Like Julia Child says in the movie, when her first publisher chooses not to publish her book, " 8 years of my life wasted. Of what use is writing, if no one wants to publish it". I dream of writing one day, soon enough. For me, my blog is a means of testing the waters, if I may, to see whether I do indeed have it in me to make what others may want to read. And many-a-time, the absence of any sign tells me that I don't have it in me. I try to avoid the bellowing sound that resounds in my head telling me that I am perhaps wasting my time, and I would be better off doing something else, because I do not want to hear that response.
And then I wonder, what if one's virtual writings are liked primarily by people who know and like what one is in real life, the content of what you write, notwithstanding. Is it worth changing who you are, just so that people encourage what you like doing? The fiercely independent person in me, may perhaps want to vociferously declare - NO! But the fiercely passionate about writing person inside me may squeak - maybe yes. And that, whoever is listening out there, is the gist of 'drowning in self doubt'. Do I have the right answer? No. But when consumed with the question of 'whether all of this makes sense', I just float the question out there, hoping somehow, somewhere I will find an answer, an answer either one I want to hear, or an answer for which I develop the courage to hear.....
