As I was listening to Big Magic (Liz Gilbert) for the second or third time a week or so ago, lines just kept popping out at me. I have the physical copy of the book as well as the audiobook, and as I listen (usually while driving), I often have the book open generally to the same page. I’ll often grab my pen or a little post-it and note the section she’s reading if it is powerful enough.

(I’m usually a very safe driver. Don’t worry.)

The line I starred and underlined that day was on page 99, in the section titled “Motives.”

This is in the larger section called “Permission.”

She begins,

“I once wrote a book in order to save myself. I wrote a travel memoir in order to make sense of my own journey and my own emotional confusion. All I was trying to do with that book was figure myself out. In the process, though, I wrote a story that apparently helped a lot of other people figure themselves out — but that was never my intention. … [Big Magic] is obviously a self-help guide, right? But with all due respect and affection, I did not write this book for you; I wrote it for me. I wrote this book for my own pleasure, because I truly enjoy thinking about the subject of creativity. It’s enjoyable and useful for me to meditate on this topic.”

She never does answer the question: “But why do you send those writings out into the public? Why not just write in your journal? Can’t you figure yourself out that way?”

Why do we want others to read what we write?

Why do we want them to know what we think, how we think?

Isn’t this all just incredibly self-absorbent and indulgent?

That question drives me back around to the topic of What We Owe (blog post in draft form).

What do we owe others? What do we owe ourselves?

Why do I care if anyone reads what I write? Why does any of it matter?

Maybe because I’m still waiting for that tribe — the one I imagined as a little kid growing up: the idyllic group of people who would sit with me and talk about things like truth and beauty, who would take care of one another, who would create, who would take care of the other living things, who would help me understand this world and my place in it. Who would know and accept me.

I’m still looking for them.

But maybe — since I’m becoming older now, and I haven’t yet found them — maybe I’m starting to realize something: we have to be our own saviors, and in the process, in our own vulnerability and offerings of self, we might help create that community for others.

Maybe that’s why I write about the things that I think, and why I want to share them, as terrifying as it is.

Having a blog again is a tricky proposition.

It is already reminding me of my old pattern:

Step one: offer something with vulnerability and send it out into the universe, and wait for the response.

Step two: if no response comes, give up.

Step three: a few years later, repeat.

If I’ve learned one thing from all the writing books and articles I’ve read, it is that you can’t give up after you submit and are rejected.

Rejections, like silence, aren’t evidence of your worth, your value (or lack thereof).

A blog is a little bit like a half-hearted submission. I send it out to test the waters: will people like it? Will people respond? Am I screaming into the void?

But this time, I told myself, the blog is just one part of my writing practice. The other part is to dig deeper, to pull out the half-finished stories, the outlined novels, the vision boards for the documentary ideas. To stop telling myself no one cares. To say: “Maybe no one cares. But it’s fun. Do it. Do it anyway.”

What will it take for me to actually finish one of my real stories, an actual project, send it to an actual publisher? What am I waiting for?

Permission?