The Naming

I fancy myself to be a writer.  There’s a marketplace out there teeming with opportunities for people like me.  It’s a creative process to shove what I am in the background and focus on the ones that would sell:  the techie, the businesswoman, the analyst.  I never thought I had them in me.  I look at my simulacra with wonder and ask them, “Where did you spring from?”  They’ve expanded what I am, and I greet each one like someone I’ve met for the very first time.  There are times that I enjoy playing with the various aspects of my persona.  I delight that I can take on new forms. It’s my dream to cosplay strong women characters with super powers and long hair.  I just never thought I would don the garb of a techie-guru-slash-businesswoman of sorts.  It can be fun, but today I am saturated.  And I see myself for what I really am:  a poser; a jack of all trades, master of none.

Kazuo Inamori, the founder of Kyocera and other highly successful enterprises says that one secret to success is to focus on doing one thing well.  He believes that at the heart of everything is that one truth that we’re all searching for.  I haven’t thought about it enough to believe what he believes.  But oh, how I long for that one truth in me to be free.  I don’t want to be just a writer.  I want to be named.  And this does not mean something as shallow as getting a by-line or gaining recognition.  I want to be able to write as naturally as a caterpillar spins herself into a cocoon, as languidly as a cat cradled by the afternoon sun, as bravely as a woman warrior arms herself for battle.

Sometimes, in my simulated writings, I see vestiges of who I am.  In titles like On Love Letters and VoIP and in the humor which no one except my editor will probably read. How does one weave herself completely into work?  How does one show who she really is in absolutely everything she has to do?   When inspired writing comes, is it okay to hush every other voice inside you?  They speak in whispers, all buzzing at the same time like students waiting for the professor to say something.  Are they talking to me? Are they me?

Then You come.  And You tell me You are my Truth, my Comfort and Defender, the Lover of my soul.  I can be what I am in You.  Some of my questions remain, but the turmoil has passed.

I have been named.