So today, in light of celebrating different writing voices, I'm gonna stray from the funny blogs I've written lately, and discuss something a little more serious. When I started Coffee, Yoga and Life's Other Necessities, my intention was to share my journey through ashrams, college, and whatever comes next (let's ignore the fact that I still have nooo idea what to do after college, and how much that freaks me out). I guess, in a perfect world, it would have been a "spiritual journey" where I yoga my way to enlightenment. Just looking back on my first post, it's amazing how much more serious I intended this blog to be:
Two cups of coffee later, and I'm still ready to fall over. Even Godiva
raspberry chocolate flavor can't get me to "spring forward" like the
rest of the universe and beyond. It's funny how malleable time can be;
we, as humans can just decide that because the sun does its little dance
of being more visible throughout the day, we should alter the clock. It
still doesn't make sense. Then again, such is life.
I guess it's something I should get used to. In less than three weeks,
my body's gonna have to warm up to getting up at 4:30 and mediate (sans
sleep) for the next hour and a half. Meditation can go one of two ways
for me: 1) starting as a lovely image of the ocean and turning into
freakish drams where old friends steal lemon drops, or 2) starting as a
lovely image of the ocean, and turning into "saltwater tastes
funny...water...oh shit, did I remember to do the laundry? I gotta
charge my phone. Hey, it just buzzed! It's not dead yet...I should
really check my phone." Is it just this generation that gets the
unforsaken itch to check their phone while meditating? It's kind of a
dilemma, to achieve peace of mind when three different pieces of
technology are yelling at you to pay attention to your social life.
So that's imponderment #1. I'm not sure if that's a word, but it sounds
nice and blog like, so there you go. I'll try to update this thing
regularly, but regularly may turn into "whenever I have both free time
and inspiration," which may happen only when both cups of coffee decide
to kick in.
Somewhere between returning home from the ashram, and my second year of college, I realized that I got more positive feedback whenever I wrote funny blogs. While I naturally lean towards more introspective writing, I toyed with silly gifs, the ever-popular "list posts," and puns...an embarrassingly high number of puns. While I enjoyed writing these silly posts, there was always that itching thought that I wanted my blog to reflect my life--and I wasn't always in a silly mood. Yet I had convinced myself that "funny" was all my readers wanted, and that sharing my introspection was too self-indulgent, too personal.
In every creative class I've attended, the teacher has emphasized "finding your voice." Similar to finding yourself, I had assumed that meant I had to search for one voice, and stick with it. To me, a writing voice was akin to a tattoo: either it was permanent, or it wasn't legit. So, because I started seriously writing in high school, I vowed my voice to be sarcastic, witty, and to include made-up words such as "sugly" (skinny and ugly--why, teenage Kira, why??). And while I LOVE writing that sort of dialogue, writing something that's supposed to be personal and sarcastic at the same time is like eating chocolate made out of rocks.
But, *shrug* the all important VOICE was set in stone, so what could I do?
Like, everything I didn't do. But we'll get to that later.
What I didn't realize at the time was how much my writing dilemma mirrored my "self" crisis. Throughout high school, I struggled with being the shy, quiet girl, who was also crazy at the same time. I didn't think that I could be totally genuine with such opposing qualities--thus, I was driven crazy by this search for a true self that I already was. Because--gasp!--I had yet to realize that a person can have different moods, different layers, and that it's totally acceptable to act differently around certain sets of people.
(Also, I'd like to apologize to anyone from high school, because my teenage brain decided to settle on the crazy, won't-ever-shut-up self as my "true self." Hmmm).
So today, I read a post from Youtuber Carrie Hope Fletcher's blog, All I Know Now . The post was so serious, so introspective, and so good, that it inspired me to just get my plain ol' unedited thoughts out into the internet-verse. But what I know now, is that doesn't mean I have to make any drastic changes to this blog, or to myself. Because my silly side vs. my thoughtful side isn't more genuine than the other. And sure, some posts will be more appealing to people than others. But forcing funny (or seriousness) out of me isn't doing anybody any favors.
I guess this is just a long-winded way of saying be yourself--hopefully in a less cheesy way--and that the self isn't this stagnant personality you just find one day.
Namaste.
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