Thoughts on Conscious Self-Expression

I’ve been feeling creatively restless lately. I keep wanting to make changes to this space—to rebrand, redesign, rewrite. I’ve gone so far as to buy a new domain name and play around with other hosting options again. Every time I get in this headspace, though, I always experience a failure to launch. In part, because I’m hesitant to make a change that I may end up regretting. As I wrote about in my post, Recommitting to My Creative Spirit, I’ve done this a lot in the past. A new idea will take hold of me and I’ll want to run with it instead of cultivating what I’ve already created. This has resulted in many, many, many lost writings and photos, which I deeply regret. There’s a lot of ground in my creative past that can’t be recovered due to this unfortunate habit. I guess I wanted to call myself out on the impulse and acknowledge that it has been a problem in an effort to (hopefully) hold myself accountable and prevent it from happening again.

Sometimes the anxiety of using my full name for my blog and social media will agitate my peace of mind. I’ll think it’s better to use a name that isn’t mine or at least isn’t evidently mine, something that’s a little easier to hide behind. It’s not that anything has happened, it’s just wondering about if something does. It’s about being paranoid. Though I constantly remind myself of something Roxane Gay said before…about how you can write about personal things and still maintain your privacy. I know I don’t have to share everything, that there are details I can guard if I wish.

In my 20s, blogging and personal writing and utilizing social media to foster relationships you wouldn’t have had otherwise, was fun and exciting and even a little intoxicating. For someone who always struggled to be community-oriented, I found a place with others who understood introverted personalities, social anxiety, and creative impulses. I could be a version of myself that didn’t always feel understood by my in-person peers. I think the reason I still cling to blogging is because, even as an adult, this is a fun, nostalgic way to express myself. It’s just determining what and how I want to express my interior experience that has proven challenging. Ten years ago, I was much more liberal with airing out personal details online than I am now, which is most likely a result of having done so.

I don’t think it’s inherently wrong to want to open myself up more to this space. It’s not wrong that I want to be more vulnerable and personal through this outlet. This is essentially one of the original purposes of the internet, before rampant monetization took over—to connect people with experiences and information of others throughout the world. But it’s hard to go online today and ignore how soiled the internet has become. The problem with the internet is that it’s for people, all types of people. There are those out there who are determined to weaponize it.

Sometimes I find myself longing for the internet “of old,” but I don’t think there was any way it wasn’t going to become what it has. It’s one of those inevitable truths of life, something that a history professor of mine used to say in almost every class, “Where there are people, there is conflict.” The internet is a reflection of us but it’s also a reflection of politics and billionaires, it’s a reflection of things that are so far out of our control that the only way to escape the puppeteering is to not participate at all. So while I want the freedom to express myself fully, I recognize that what I actually have to do is express myself consciously. Not just because of fraud and data mining and targeted advertising and civil unrest, but for my own wellbeing and, yes, that includes instincts of self-preservation. Whatever I write, I want to be able to stand behind.

One of the more significant reasons I even wanted to use my real name online was because I was tired of pretending to be someone I wasn’t and tired of hiding behind “branding.” I’d spent a long time renaming myself as a writer in my pre-pandemic years. Finally, I got to a point where I wanted to just be myself, even if that person wasn’t always posting the most interesting or engaging content. I wanted, above all, to express myself honestly and authentically. The best way I knew how to do that was behind my own name. I have frequently made the mistake of steering my creative energy in a different direction rather than focusing it on what’s already there. So instead of needlessly tinkering with a new website, I’ve decided to write about it instead and why I felt the need to do it at all. It’s often easier to start a project than it is to nurture it. I want to break that cycle, even if I have to come back and do it again in the future. I think that’s what it takes sometimes, maybe all the time, until one day the cycle stops regenerating.