They say figure out what you love to do and find a way to get paid for it…or something like that. I think it was Kathie Lee Gifford who said her father told her that. And I guess with this blog, that’s what I am trying to do. I love to write…well, I don’t really love to write. I mean I love to write when I don’t have to think about it much and the writing just flows. When that happens, writing is pure bliss. But that’s totally rare. Most of the time writing is excruciating hell that hardly ever matches up with what’s in my head, though I’m learning to make peace with that.
What I really love is telling stories. You see, I’m somewhat of a know-it-all, and by know-it-all I don’t mean I actually know it all. It’s just that I’m so often right that I move through life accordingly. That is, of course, until I’m proven wrong, which has happened more often than I’d like, but not enough to negate the fact that I’m almost always right. I love to pontificate on the shit that goes down in life –not just my own – good, bad or what have you. This blog gives me the opportunity to do that. I would do it for free…wait, I am doing this for free, no actually it’s an expense. It’s not even free. I’m paying for this! So I guess I’m still working on Kathie Lee’s father’s advice.
Not only am I doing this without pay, I’ve been at this for a minute…the whole time without pay. This is the third iteration of my blogging ventures. I’ve actually been doing this on and off for over 12 years. It all started when I turned 30, that’s when I created a blog called 365 days of 30. I got the idea after seeing that movie, “Julie & Julia” starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams, where Amy played a woman who decided to make every recipe in Julia Child’s cookbook called “The Art of French Cooking.” If I’m not mistaken, she made a recipe every day and blogged about it every day. After seeing that movie, I was like I can do that.
Of course I wasn’t about to make my way through Julia Child’s massive culinary tome, but 30 is a big birthday so I thought it would be interesting to write about what it was like for me. It’s an age where people expect you to have your shit together, even though I can’t think of a time when I wasn’t expected to have my shit together, even as a kid, though I never did. Thirty is the age where many people consider you to be good and grown. It’s the age considered by many as the start of being old. It’s a milestone birthday in one’s life. So, inspired by the aforementioned movie, I wanted to document every day of the year I spend being 30 with daily blog posts until I was 31, hence the title 365 days of 30.
That blog got absolutely no traction. It actually turned out to be more like 65 days of 30 rather than 365 days. And it wasn’t even that I didn’t have anything to write about. The problem was, I just wasn’t up to writing every day. It’s really hard to write when you’re getting no response. It’s like talking to someone and they don’t talk back – it’s tré frustrating.
Still, when you really want to do something, it’s hard to give it up, even when you don’t get your desired outcome. Funny how it can be hard to keep going and hard to quit at the same damn time. Anyway, I kept going. Sporadic as they were, I continued to post throughout the year until I turned 31, which made 365 days of 30 an even more unfitting title on top of my sparse posts, and so, I changed the name to Shescribe.
I blogged under that title for about 10 years, on and off, until last year when I decided to change it once again. This time it was because someone else’s website had a very similar name and she’s had hers long before I had mine. She’s never contacted me. I don’t know if she knows my site exists. Right now, my reach isn’t big enough that anyone would care, but you know, in case I blow up (Do people even use that term anymore? I’m seriously so out of the loop with the slang?), I don’t want no trouble. No need to send me a cease and desist. No need to sue me. I’m already way ahead of you. So now we have Shirscribe. I play fair.
But no matter the name, the whole time I’ve been blogging, I’ve never gained a big enough following to make a living off of it. At first that was because I simply didn’t know how. Now I’m more aware of the marketing strategies necessary to grow an audience, but I find them really hard to execute, not because they’re complex, but because even if I master them there’s still no guarantees.
Therein lies the difficulty. Therein lies the fear, which causes apprehension and then paralysis: the thought that you can work really hard for something and still not get it. I was a poor student for most of my school-going years. Not that I wasn’t smart, I just didn’t work very hard. Like high school and college especially, I barely scraped by. Yet for all of the pain and regret that those choices caused me, oddly enough there came a small sense of relief in believing that it was because I didn’t do my best. I could always tell myself that if I would have put in more effort, I too, would have had a better outcome. It’s a crutch of sorts, one whose validity can never be authenticated.
Because who wants to work hard and fail? Yet in the pursuit of one’s dreams that is the risk you must take. That risk, for me, is writing in the absence of light – a play on words from the title of the HBO documentary “Black Art in the Absence of Light.” It’s all about the challenges of being a black artist and getting your work seen in a world that so often would rather you be invisible.
While the challenges of being a black artist in any art from are unique, having your work be seen is no easy feat for most in general, not to mention getting it to the next level of being celebrated – that’s a-whole-nother kind of rarity. And it’s that uncertainty that makes me hesitant to proceed even when the Force which compels me to write in the first place pushes me forward.
I’m a firm believer that no written work is truly finished until it is read. Like that’s a major reason why I write here is to have it read, and preferably by the masses. Otherwise, I’d just write in my diary. That’s part of the reason I took a break. My blog seemed to be going nowhere fast, and yet it was consuming me: trying to give it structure, trying to make it better, trying to come up with ideas to write about, becoming stressed because I was writing last-minute almost every week, writing last-minute so often because I barely believed, wondering does any of it really matter when I’m not being seen?
And yet I’m back because overall I believe the work still needs to be done…even if in the dark. Perhaps I’m not meant for many, perhaps I’m called to a few – Lord only knows. But I pray to God, and I know He’ll answer, that whoever needs to see this will see it, and therefore, I write.
See you in the dark.
Here are the lyrics to the ”Amen” theme song as I here them:
Turn on the light of heaven Lord, shine on me
Turn on the light of heaven Lord, shine on me
Shine on me
Turn on the light and put me on the right road. Help me find my way home.
Turn on the light of heaven Lord, (Shine on me)
shine on me (shine on me)
shine on me…
I need You, every day, every hour
I can’t make it without Ya, shine, shine, shine (shine on me)
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