The Job of Your Voice

You know you haven't blogged in forever when... it takes you like 238 times to get your password right. Oops.

I could shower you with a ton of excuses right now. I'm good at excuses. Like if there was an American Excuse Ninja competition, I'd put that female 5 ft gymnast alien that's going viral to SHAME.

But here's the bottom line, people: I was discouraged. A wonderful job opportunity fell through (I would have been able to blog and Facebook for a living, folks. Hello, that had my name all over it!) Everyone around me seemed to be starting their medical residencies and popping out kids, and I felt like I was Captain America--frozen in time--waiting for my chance to resurrect itself centuries down the road. I realize I just made an American Ninja and superhero reference within the first few paragraphs. If that doesn't say "marriage," I don't know what does.

I would read these blogs (cough, cough, Matt Walsh) that were clearly cookie cutter written to get certain groups riled up and tons of views. If there was a poster of preaching to the choir, these bloggers would be on it. This would defeat me even more. What's the purpose of writing, I would think, if 2 million people would rather read a whiny mom blog about what her kid-less friends don't understand? 

In this social media driven world, it's hard not to get immersed in numbers, in shares, in hits. What I didn't realize is that I was applying the failure that has plagued my professional endeavors to what was once an escape from all that. As author Meg Rosoff says,

"Your writing voice is the deepest possible reflection of who you are. The job of your voice is not to seduce or flatter or make well-shaped sentences. In your voice, your readers should be able to hear the contents of your mind, your heart, your soul." 

My job is not to flatter a topic, whether I agree with it or not, for the sake of popularity. My job is not to base the weight of my experiences on how many people "shared" them. My job is to relay the depths of my heart.

And it's time I got back to that.