Why I’m taking a stab at creative writing and blogging…
March 2024
“One writes out of one thing only — one’s own experience. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give. This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art”. — James Baldwin
How this all started…
At the start of 2024 — New Year’s Eve, in fact — I shared a pretty vulnerable and personal post via social media. Basically, I let people in on a half-truth I’d been telling them. I had been projecting only success and happiness, when in fact, 2023 was quite literally the hardest year of my life. I quipped that it had been a year for the books, and (in my head) I listed the chapters, paragraphs, sentences, etc. that made up this book. You can read the whole thing if you want:
But the TL;DR is this:
- Chapter 1 (Fracture): I went through hell. I experienced heartache, grief, racism, and some pretty intense mental health challenges. I hit pretty close to rock bottom.
- Chapter 2 (Triage): I had to take a hard look in the mirror and face some tough truths. For pretty much my whole life, I had lived for everyone but myself. I had no boundaries, and I was so afraid of being imperfect, that I was basically a shadow of myself to avoid making mistakes. That had to change.
- Chapter 3 (Recover): I leaned into therapy, put in a lot of difficult work to heal, and out of all the hurt and pain, I was able to do some pretty awesome things, like start my own consulting firm, explore my sexuality — which enabled me to feel the liberating joys of queerness — and make incredible memories with friends new and old.
- Chapter 4: (Strengthen): I resolved to choose me, to give myself the love I had given others, to prioritize my own wellbeing — not as a means of being able to better serve others — but simply because I deserve peace and rest and all the best things life has to offer me, without guilt or shame.
Three months later, and a quarter of the way through the year, I’m proud of the fact that I maintain a consistent meditation practice, attend therapy regularly, and scored some pretty huge personal wins. And while writing has always been part of my journey back to myself, here lately I’m especially proud that I’ve leaned into it as a tool to help me both process my feelings and wrestle with some big ideas.
What began as a therapy exercise has since become an invitation to tap into a side of myself that had gone dormant. There’s a part of me that’s slick creative and wants to try new ways of expressing myself all the time, and there’s also part of me that’s super curious and arrives at reasonably informed opinions about a relatively wide range of topics because I can’t stop consuming new and interesting information. But I’ve never really tapped into or shared those parts of myself very much — remember that whole fear of being imperfect thing?
But I don’t want to let fear keep me from honoring parts of myself that are so clearly clamoring for some TLC.
Where is this all going…
So I think I’ll keep this writing thing going, but this time in public. I want to keep thinking about all the things, but I also want to share some of the things I write with y’all! I want to share these things, principally because what I have to say matters, and more specifically because what I have to say matters to me. It’s important for me to contend with the serious proposition of finding my voice, and I think the best way to do that is through the process of reading, writing, sharing, revising, and repeat. It’s also important to me that I do this work out loud, so that in doing so I might arrive at the sort of vulnerability and intrinsic confidence that are unencumbered by other people’s judgement or the mere notion of getting something wrong. I want to disabuse myself of the completely unserious notion that whatever I say or do here — or anywhere for that matter — has to be perfect. And finally, it’s important for me to write in public because after my LinkedIn post, as well as sharing a few creative pieces with friends and colleagues, I think what I have to say might just matter to other people too.
So sometimes I’ll share poetic, creative pieces that have helped me process my feelings, or toy around with a concept like what would it mean to write a letter to a feeling, or ask questions of it, for instance: “Dear courage, what advice do you have for someone who’s tired of being courageous?”? Other times I might share more blog-like posts, essays, or academic-y pieces about ideas that both challenge and embrace me. Other times, I might try to do both at the same time.
I will almost always write from a place that is slightly informal and flouts a wide range of conventional grammar rules. I don’t want to hinder my ability to express my thoughts due to rules that are basically made up. So some sentences will end with a preposition, and others will be too long. Sometimes you will see questionable conjunctions and hyphenations, or new words altogether (I think I might call them Robert-isms lol), and at all times you will see me sneak in humor, because after all it’s my blog, I’m writing it, and I’m pretty funny, if you ask me. And undoubtedly there will be revisions, not only because sometimes my mind moves too fast for my fingers when I type, but also because that’s the whole point of this process. So, I ask for your grace when I need to make small revisions for things like typos or factual errors, but also when I’ve decided a piece has done what I needed it to do, so I take it down, or when I trash something because I don’t like it anymore.
I don’t know how often I will publish stuff, but I’ll try to be semi-regular, maybe monthly at a minimum? And I never really know how long these things will be, but they range from short poems, to two or three healthy paragraphs about a topic, to longer pieces where I share my reaction to something I’m reading, watching, or listening to. And with creative pieces, especially, they often tell me when their finished being written, and I usually oblige lol. But I will always do my best to be honest, speak with only as much authority as I ethically can on a topic, and always, always affirm our collective humanity and intelligence.
What’s next…
I already have a few pieces in the drafts — some creative, others more think piece-y — just waiting to greet new eyes, but I want to share them when the time is right. Remember, you are the visuals...
And speaking of the topic du jour — Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter — I’m actually drawing inspiration directly from her as I embark on this, my own public project, blending research, blogging, poetry, storytelling, etc. and writing not within the confines of any particular approach — essay, poem, article, white paper — but in fact borrowing from all of them in hopes of producing something unique to me. And so, to that end, my very first piece is about act ii: COWBOY CARTER, Queen Bey’s latest act in a three act series that’s already shook the people and the proverbial table with act i: RENAISSANCE.
So take a look, tell me what you think, and hopefully we’ll have some fun together on this next chapter of my journey.
