I am going to speak in a more personal manner, directly to you, for a second. Yes you.
I’m aware that this blog has a lot of readers, and I’m not sure why this is so.
Most of the feedback I get about my blog writing is that it’s
(1) impossibly dense,
(2) mildly crazy, or
(3) laced with objectionable ideas (about either science or spirituality, depending on who you are—I seem to offend in both directions).
So… I’m not sure why you come here. Is it the effort to piece together the story behind writer? The hopes of catching some oblique community gossip? The thrill of a new vocab word?
I write about a small subculture in an easily recognizable location, I and the subjects of my writing (myself included) are not terribly difficult to identify.
I feel comfortable with this. I’m a trusting person and this has brought well-intentioned and generous people into my life. It is trust others, as much as strategy, that has brought me into the good life that I have.
But because I am candid here about my feelings and some of the thoughts I’m working through, as the readership grows I do worry that what I reveal here could do harm. Is this crazy? Well, the worry comes up.
There’s a lot I don’t discuss—specifics of asana, teacher-student relationship, my intimate yoga-person friendships. I’m trying to embed some modesty into an inherently public kind of writing. By keeping some things quiet I feel more freedom to talk openly about others.
Maybe this effort to protect the more sensitive aspects of this practice is actually keeping me from revealing good parts of myself and the most interesting aspects of my experience. Stuff that it would be good to work over in a journal.
No point to be made here. But I felt like giving you a little flicker of the self-awareness that this whole wonderous but also edgy and strange form of self-expression creates in me. Most of you are not at all comfortable with the whole concept of writing a weblog, and see it as a slightly discomforting thing.
But it’s not like that. It’s like this.
You are welcome here, but I am going to try to stop thinking about you and what you might think about me.
Yours as ever, (0v0)
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