Day 121: You Do You

Last night, I sat down with Alex, and we had a heart-to-heart, and by heart-to-heart, I mean I ranted for three hours and he nodded and said some wise stuff every half an hour or so.

But sometimes you just kind of have to rant. Sometimes, those of us who make sense of things by verbally talking through them, need to just blah blah at someone until we can understand what we're trying to figure out what exactly we're trying to figure out.

And that's the thing, so much of the time I have no idea what's wrong with me, I just know something is off. "I don't know what I want, but I know what I don't want."

And through all this blabberty-jabberty, it became clear that I had lost my muchness somewhere along the lines. Somewhere around losing a coveted production spot in undergrad, I started to doubt myself. Then I read all these how-to books, got onto the blogosphere and saw so many people not making it, and I started to think, "What do I know? I know nothing. I'll do whatever everyone else says I should do."

This started to eke into my real life, until we were getting ready for the wedding and I put my foot down and said, "Dammit, I'm going to wear purple chucks and no one can stop me!"

Some people snickered. Others loved it and called it "whimsical." But what matters is that when looking at this picture to the right, I feel like that's me. I feel like I was true to myself. And so I had the wedding I wanted.

Now with this idea that perhaps, just maybe, I should follow the beat of my own weird little snowflake heart, I've started listening to music again in order to find inspiration for my WIP. In college, I compiled a fake soundtrack for my book like it was a movie. Today, I did the same thing. Cover art and all. Is it weird to do such a thing? Yes. Did Ernest Hemingway ever partake in such flibberty jibbet? No, probably not. Although I would love to see his cover art for The Sun Also Rises. It would be so awkward.

This revelation of mine was backed up by watching that new PBS documentary on Walt Disney. They report that he didn't know exactly what he wanted to be, but he knew what he wanted to do. No one before Disney had thought to put a real soundtrack to a cartoon that interacted with the characters. No one had the optimism that Disney held in his Mickey character. And so he made something new. People thought he was nuts, because he wasn't following the pre-approved structure, but he did his own thing and succeeded.

So really there's no point in writing if you're not going to be honest to who you are, because I'm the only person I know who wore purple chucks to her wedding, and I'm the only person I know who can write this book that is in my head.

So you do you. You go out and follow your gut instinct when it comes to creation. Because what will come out of your endeavors will be original. It will be creative. It will be the best parts of you.