Another post not about mothering but about not being a writer

I loose myself in the internet.  It is my addiction; I use it to escape the moment.  Sometimes I fight against this tool of modernity by detoxing, banning myself from the internet.  The thing is that mostly my escape into the computer is an escape from my own relentless banter and feelings in inadequacy.   I have realized that my internet procrastinating is directly related to my battle with labels.

So, I’ve been talking about shedding labels.  Not too easy.  One can’t just say, okay, no labels, and then just walk away free.  Some labels fall easily to the wayside, but some are attached to me like a third arm. How can I not be a writer? I had hoped to have finally found my “true” calling. 

I attributed my grade school teachers’ compliments about my essays to being a nerd, not a writer.  It wasn’t until I was in college and having instructors rave about my essays that I thought, “Hey, I have a knack for writing and I happen to love doing it,” before going on with my life.  A few years later, I spun music for the local college radio station and someone called me out of the blue and said he liked my show and would I consider writing an indie rock column for his magazine.  I wrote him an album review as a sample and he hired me.  Soon enough I was dubbed “writer.”   I didn’t choose it, it just happened.  When I look back over time, it was me, doing the things that made me feel alive, saying yes, that transformed me into a writer, not me carrying out my duty to create.  But, now it’s been years since I wrote a column and have had little published since then, nothing for the last nearly two years.  I have written no books and I have no ideas.  Don’t you have to write to be a writer?  If I am not a writer what am I?

Some of my labels were easy to shed, but those ones have little affect on my life.  Letting go of the writer label is perhaps the most difficult and the most freeing.  I subject myself to so much duty.  Duty turns love into drudgery. When I don’t perform, I call myself a hack.  When I wake up, and my daughter is still asleep, that is my time to create, so I create because it’s my duty.  I obligate myself to create.  But this kind of create is so muted and twisted and my obligation to fulfill the writer label, or the _fill in the blank_  has got me burying my head in facebook and watching the world collapse on youtube.  I don’t want to have to write anymore.  I want to write if inspired. I want to write for love.  I want to write because I was moved to. 

If I am not a writer, I have permission not to write.

Oh, and then there is the activist.  I feel I have to be part of the Occupy movement.  All the activists are, unless they have something even cooler going on. Well, I have been trying to figure out what it even means to be an activist for a while, so maybe I really do just need to let it rest for a while.  If I’m not an activist, I don’t need to worry about defining it. I don’t have to feel like a hack if I stay home from the big meeting. There is this small part of me that wants to still be able to say I am part of some “activist community,” but I don’t have the energy to prove it to anyone, not even myself.  Anyway, a lot of those people are just a bunch of cocky, self-righteous, know-it-alls (I don’t really mean it, but it feels good to say).

I have, in some ways, become dependent on labels to define me, give me direction, but labels can easily turn against you.  I have too many.  I take them too seriously – I don’t want to be one of those fake artists that my mother taught me to loathe.  So I shed them; I am trying to shed them all.  When I wake up in the morning, I don’t have to absorb myself in internet - email, craft ideas, news, social media - to avoid myself and my constant banter insisting I should be doing…. Just for now, I don’t have to be anybody.  I can be a nobody.  I am deprogramming. 

Not to mention that deprogramming comes with its own scary world.  My program and my identity protects me from becoming someone I don’t want to be, acquiring those bad label.  What if I am not part of the revolution?  What if I am boring?  What if I want money? What if I want luxury and a lot of money!?  What if I join a religion and a church?  What if I sit around and watch cable TV all day? What if I become conservative?  I can be scared of those things but I can’t stay the same and I don’t want to live the rest of my life trying to fulfill hollow labels.

I want to shed this anxiety that tells me I deserve my horrible fate if I ignore the all-encompassing mantra of work, duty, progress.  I just want to feel what it is like to be my raw nobody self. 

Low Tide Beach

A trip to the ocean is a way for me to renew, foster a connection with the world around me and a reminder that I belong somewhere. The ocean is one of the very few constants in my life, and greeting her is like greeting an old familiar friend, arms wide open. Ramona and I have been going to the beach together since she was 9 months old; it has become our special mini-trip (as you might know from reading my blog). The ocean brings me peace and connection. As a child I stayed twice during the summer with my dad in a cabin on an Island in the gentle Puget sound. There was a little trail that went down to the beach. The beach was so empty of people, that it was always a surprise on those rare occasions that someone would come walking into view. At six and seven year of age, I was set loose to play on the beach alone for hours. I became one with my surrounding then. It was possibly one of the last times that I felt safe, there at the water's edge.  Within a month my father was arrested and sent to prison for almost three years and I left the state of Washington with my mother to spend the next decade moving from neighborhood to neighborhood, town to town, state to state.

But, I hope for my child I can create situations that will lead to the same sort of connection that I felt for those summer days on the Island. maybe one day I will find a perfect island cabin to call ours for a while.

Besides connection, our trips to the ocean are like mini-travels. I travel to open and change perspective, to remove my self from the location from which all that I do takes place. No house to clean, no friends to socialize with, no habits to habitate with, nothing to make or write, no way to get to work...leaving me with only reality, the moment, to experience and explore.  I am able to engage in the moment effortlessly.

Yesterday was a super low tide at sunset, so we had to go!

That last post and re-thinking the blog

That last post I wrote 5 days ago. I posted it today, back-dated. I have been rethinking the blog. I have been thinking that I want a radical mothering blog, but I want to blog about myself as well. My inner and outer journey. My complete self. I was planning to split the blog into two. I haven't felt inspired to do so.

So i am thinking, what is this blog about? Shall I create a separate blog for the part about mothering? For my non personal-healing and growth ideas? My non-integrated blog?

Well, I haven't figured it out yet. And since I am trying to shed the "writer" label, I can't say if and when I will make this decision, so I guess I will continue as is for now. hmmm.

Shedding Labels

This last while, I have found myself, after the worst 6-7 months of the decade, immersed total confusion. Circumstances have become better, but I am not sure what to do with them, with me. As I have written before, being all these things that I am, or say I am, or think I am - musician, writer, activist, anarchist, feminist, traveler, artist, mother, creative, intellectual etc. - is just so confusing and time consuming. Am I really all this stuff? Are they callings? Or are they just the labels that I have acquired? I know that many people don’t like to be labeled, and neither do I, but isn’t saying that you are anything labeling yourself? If you say you are a teacher, aren’t you labeling yourself? I see labels as an integral part of identity. But I have also come to know that sometimes acquiring labels, especially for long periods of time, hinders change. (I see this in mono-thinking conservatives and liberals all the time). It can be hard to shed a label once you have been wearing it for a while, even if it isn’t really you anymore. They can also lead to insecurities. “How can I be an artist if I am not even making art?”

When I was younger, I was very anti-label. I never tried to fulfill a roll, in fact I may have been actively trying to not do what what expected of me. I was just me, I liked it that way and damned if you tried to pigeon-hole me. Though I must admit, adults were good at labeling me. To my mother, I was “the creative child,” to the school I was an “at-risk” student. I ignored them.
I started dressing Death Punk/gothy not because I was one, but because I wore the clothes that I thought looked good. I had one goth friend, but didn’t hang out with goths for the longest time until they started gravitating towards me…if I dress like one am I one? And of course I am using the word goth to cover everything I was called (death rocker, death punk, goth, kooky spook, gutter goth…all variations). When I was around 22 or 23, I was labeled anarchist by a group of anarchists. It happened after a long discussion about my political views with a collective that was meeting at my house, that one of my roommates belonged too. I was quickly welcomed into the collective. Later I decided to adopt the label diligently, largely due to people’s misconceptions about anarchism. I have helped open up a lot of minds about the ideas that exist within the many nuances of anarchism. I expanded and still expand many people’s understanding of that particular label. I also don't want the black blocs and what some called “lifestyle anarchists” to dominate people perceptions about what anarchism is. But by this time I was being labeled a rocker.

I was also going to a digital art college at the time, and read a book called “Art and Fear” for one of my classes. At this point, I took the scary plunge and started calling myself an artist. Now for me, that was big, because my mother is a very serious artist. She often accuses other (most) artists as not making “real art.” So to me, calling myself an artist meant I had to make “real art.” And the story goes on…I acquired more labels through expressing who I was and doing the things I loved.

Now, I find myself confused. Not knowing who the hell I am and what the hell I am doing. So I am shedding labels the best I can. Going back to the young me, who rebelliously shunned labels. (Anothers one of my first labels – rebel). I am going to be me only. And I look at the Occupy movement and I wonder if the times are changing, and labels are becoming less useful…or maybe new ones are being created. The media and powers that be are furiously trying to label the movement. Labeling makes things easier to pick apart and analyze in superficial ways. It makes us be able to wrap our heads around something. They can’t wrap their heads around the movement. We can’t even wrap our heads around the movement. No one could define the complexity of the movement in words. Perhaps we could describe large parts of the movement via book and film. We can experience it. The truth is, we really can’t even wrap our head around the complexity of a single human being. We CAN experience being one. I wonder what labels OWS will adopt or be dubbed. I wonder what labels Occupy Petaluma will adopt or be dubbed.

So, this is a time of shedding. Not thinking about labels. Shedding some baggage. Refusing labels. I am looking forward to experiencing myself in the future. See what old labels come back, what new ones I might have adopted. Or if I just refuse to decide to ever call myself anything again.

Princesses

This beautifully sums up all my criticisms of Disney princesses (and a lot of those horrible sexist stories that fairy tales became). Except for the part about Disney's monopoly of princesses.

A couple months ago, when Ramona was wearing her princess dress, we ran into a little girl who insisted on knowing what princess Ramona was, (as in Ariel, Belle, Rapunzel, etc.) as she didn't recognize the dress. She could not fathom that princesses existed outside of Disney Characters.