Is it working?

June 5, 2020

I feel this blog experiment may not be working. Unsure whether to continue or not. I suppose if I were to logically evaluate its efficacy, I would have to first define what the expectations were. 

1. I hoped that the blog writing would kickstart other writing. 

2. I hoped it would help clarify my confusions and states and show a path ahead. I hoped it would make me more ‘productive’. I was feeling envious of those absorbed in productive projects. I felt a pain about my own empty state. 

3. I wanted to be able to write authentically about my inner states. 

It has not kickstarted other writing yet – because I am still flexing my writing muscles and am slow? Once I finish the blog post I feel depleted of writing energy and move on to other things. But I have more ideas than I had before I began writing -- which I sometimes jot down. One particular one – the happenings in Delhi between December 2019 and end-February keep coming up. But the writing has not yet clarified my confusions and that is mostly because of #3.

I don’t feel I am able to share authentically about everything I am experiencing. Some feelings are very, very unstable and dark and I feel fearful about sharing them. I feel like I will be judged for being weak, for spiraling out of control, for grieving too long, for not going with the flow and adapting, or whatever. As I mentioned before I have been labelled as ‘one who stays too long on the dark side’. So, I write through a filter and that makes the blog completely ineffective as the tool I want it to be. 

Last year I discovered two new inner energies. I was grappling with a choice about whether or not to continue teaching karate, as the feelings of being inadequate as a sensei were huge. I wanted to continue training but not teaching. I discovered an ancient, wise, chilled out dragon and a bumbling, apprentice samurai who had no clue about what she was doing. Daily dialogues with them, drawings and writing, lead me to a place of confident choice I was previously unaware of. One of the themes that emerged while I was playing with these two figures was about armour. The dragon had his own natural impenetrable scales, while the samurai wore external metal. She was finding it too heavy and wanted to shed it. But it made her vulnerable as a warrior. I need to go back and read those pages to see exactly what happened but there was a learning there about ‘innate’ protections and discovering them, so I could shed the external armours. That my strength lay in being able to be absolutely comfortable with vulnerability. 

I will go back and read those pages but some of the questions I need to ask are apparent – about vulnerability and strength. What armours do I need to shed? And which ones may be useful to hang on to? 

Perhaps re-connecting with the inner dragon will help me see the next steps. Feeling more like the bumbling Samurai right now.