The Right Thing To Say

The view from our hotel in Pacific City (Cape Kiwanda) for my husband and my 5th wedding anniversary trip to the Oregon Coast.  I always feel most at peace at the edge of the ocean, hand and hand with my favorite guy.

Finding the right words used to be simple for me.

I’d open my mouth and somehow exactly what I wanted to say would fall out.

It’s harder these days.

Opening my mouth is more like allowing access to a dry attic up a long forgotten ladder.  What used to be there isn’t there anymore.  I mentioned this to my husband the other day after my post on Monday.  I’m thrilled I took the time to write it but I’m not in love with what I had to say.  Actually, I’d be hard pressed to even invite that post along to dinner.  I’m just not that into it.  He assures me the words I used to love so much will come back – they are there just not jumping into the scene (okay – so he said something like “they will come back, don’t worry” but I threw some spice into that for the purposes of my blog).

So what happened?  If words are a part of who I am than what does it mean when you lose them?  More importantly, where do I go to retrieve them?

Perhaps this comes from the sense of loss I’ve been feeling around my departure from certain social media platforms.  On those I would post something funny, creative, pretty, inspirational, or at least entertaining almost daily.  Removing your feelings about social media, it did provide that outlet.  I’ve been without that for almost 3 months, so maybe I’m out of practice.  Actually, retract the maybe from that last sentence, when I really think about it, that’s the only explanation that makes sense.

Out of practice.

I wish I could blame someone or something for that.  It would be  easier to accept and perhaps easier to fix, but I’m to blame.  My sister warned me to make sure and find a creative outlet to replace those – something easy to participate in – I didn’t.  I’ve knit some things, I decorated the house for Christmas, my husband and I went to a couple of concerts, we decorated our bedroom but I didn’t find a way to easily jump in, impart some wisdom or clever quip, and abandon the scene before things got too real.

And now here I am.  Crying out for help in what feels like an empty warehouse… “where’s my outlet?”

A sensible person may think this blog is my outlet.  Sure, I could jump on here daily to drop a sweet gift for all of you.  A post about an album, a review of a concert, something short I’ve been thinking about, a meaningful situation I ran across, a description of a bite of food that blew my mind – but the odds of doing that seem slim.  It took me 40 minutes just to start this post.  40 minutes of getting out my laptop (which I bought this past summer so I could sit and blog, the irony isn’t lost on me), poking around on YouTube for music videos, playing my ukulele (poorly I might add, that’s something else I’ve left out in the rain to rust), watching another video on YouTube, checking my email, looking at some shoes online (I don’t need anymore shoes, someone needs to remove my buying power) until I finally typed out a post title.

I should have typed “How Erin wastes precious ‘her’ time”.  That might have been more accurate.

In addition to just sitting down to occupy this space for a bit each night, I’m left wondering if anyone even sees it.  A big part of the loss I’ve felt around ditching Twitter, FB and Instagram is the loss of an audience.  On those platforms, I’d post a link here – people who cared could see what was up, what I had to say about something, but without, I’ve struggled to figure out how to share this small part of me.  I’ve always thrived on an audience.  Not in a narcissistic way although some may argue that it turned into that, but in a “I have something special to me that I’d like to share with you way” and I don’t know how to do that here.  I’m so sensitive to that now.  I can barely even write about it… even though I know maybe 2 people will stumble across this so why hold back?

I’m hoping that just writing helps.  I’m hoping the desire for an audience is replaced in another way.  Perhaps more people will see this… perhaps I’ll find other ways to fill the gaps.  I guess just getting these words out is a start.

And picking up my ukulele more often.

I have to pick it all back up somewhere.