t h e g r a b b l e . c o m

“Who thinks they are so important they need to write books about themselves. Who are these people who write about themselves. And how did I become one of them?”—Donald Miller, in A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life

Here Miller seems to describe my feelings for the previous couple of months. Only ignore that tiny detail about having written a book. I have never written a book in my life. What frustrates me is that awful self-centered voice in which I tend to write. Am I still eight years old keeping a diary? Why can’t I stop using these words:

I

me

am

my

This tendency revealed itself to me, I think, because I am now “officially” an “adult.” Married. Holding down a job. Responsibilities and the like. All good things, mind you. Except now I can’t go around writing openly about every personal pondering. I can’t go around running my mouth about the heinous humans in my life. Because my life is now our life. My actions and words can and will influence my family. To continue writing, I would need a pseudonym. Or, I could begin to write enigmatically:

Poetry!

Fiction!

Both of them tools to enable self-expression while preventing social and professional destruction. I exaggerate but you do get what I mean don’t you? Using these magnificent vehicles of language, like-minded people will “get” it. The merely curious will continue clueless. How convenient.

That’s until I found out I am inept at poetry and narrative.