*I had a writing prompt yesterday that blew my mind in equal parts with busting my heart open. I was in tatters.
Simply put: Begin the writing with ‘I want’ and go from there. Anytime you get stuck, go back to ‘I want.’
Write and write and write.
Is it because I was a girl? is it because I was a wife? is it because I am a mom? It was unbearably hard to think of things I want, beyond world peace and the perfect eggs benedict.
Have I really absorbed our society so deeply that I don’t have any wants of my own?
No. Its not that. I had plenty to write. But if I go and look at it closely, which I will, it becomes an exercise just to get through it. Filled with ‘caveats’ and self-deprecations and honestly, I am smacked. Even in my writing, for me, simply personal, I am equivocating.
I feel like maybe this is something I should stick with. Turn it into some sort of ‘work’ that I center myself in for awhile. What do I want? For myself, for my days? What feeling do I want? What do I want that will get me there? What do I want FOR myself? OF myself?
What if I look at yesterday’s list in a year? Will things be different? Will my list have changed? What am I wanting then?
What do you want? Do you know? Are you on track? Is there a track?
Tell.
Lovelove, in my navel-gazing way,
me.
*the writing prompt was inspired by something I’m editing and I’ll share it when the work is finished.
Yes, I know what I want, because I’m in the know-what-you-want business and because I journal every day and because I’m working so hard to make what I want happen. So yeah, it’s at my fingertips. But it’s easy for that certainty to slip away in the noise of the world and all the demands and obligations. To say nothing of the fact that women are not expected to want.
This is wonderful. I look forward to reading more about what you want.
Thanks Amy- for the read, but also for the hope of knowing what I want eventually…
This is a great question. I find myself asking the same one (or something similar) all the time. I find it’s perpetually shifting – and it might be that I want to become comfortable with that instability.
THIS: “Have I really absorbed our society so deeply that I don’t have any wants of my own?”
I think about variations of this question a lot. It has different permutations for me and and spins depending on the day, but I wonder about this a lot. Whose expectations have I absorbed? Do I even know? And what do I want?
BIG HUG.
This is a tricky one, for sure. I sometimes will find myself believing that I don’t know what I want, but if I am 100% honest with myself, I do know, I’m just not sure I have the guts to admit it. Even, as you say, in the personal writing I do just for me. Maybe this challenge also has to do with trusting ourselves?