On Identity and Throwing Caution to the Wind

It's not that I don't understand the argument. Back when the bulk of my work was PR and I spent a lot of time in K-12 schools, and even before that when I was a 2nd grade teacher, I was quite careful to safeguard my reputation. This was in part so that I could be a role model (in my best estimation of what that constituted). It was also so that in my day-to-day work my colleagues would not consider me too much of an oddball.

In many respects I'm the same now. I avoid swearing around children, for example, and I like to keep my private business to myself.

In the same breath, however, as I try, finally, to get my other work out there--including the poetry, the fiction writing, the controversial articles, and yes, my fledgling attempts at blogging--I find that I needed a name, a brand so to speak, under which to market all of the work. I tried to come up with something simple and creative to use as a URL and/or screen name, but nothing struck me--so in the end I used my own name. 

In any case, my name does precede me, at least in the city of Inglewood, CA where I wrote and designed PR publications for the school district. And I suppose that future readers could take my expansion into new topics in one of two ways--they could hold my efforts to express myself creatively in a negative way (and some undoubtedly will), but there is also the possibility that they will embrace my newfound dedication to not only thinking outside the box, but acting on it.  

Hah. I have to laugh because this all sounds so noble the way I tell it, like I'm writing some big piece that's going to change the world somehow. Would I like to do that? Yes, absolutely. In fact now that no one's telling me what to write, I'm finding my inability to identify something truly noble to write about to be a major source of frustration, but that's a story for another blog entry.

In the meantime I'm branching out, slowly but surely. It's pretty much small potatoes for now, while I hone my skills and give myself time to think.

I can say with certainty, however, that I am moving forward from a place in which I have made the committment to myself that I am not going to consciously hide my identity in my writing. If I decide to believe in something, and furthermore decide that what I believe is worthwhile enough to communicate (even in a blog that nobody reads) then I am just going to put pen to paper and not be afraid.

So here I am now, out here in the interwebs, throwing a small degree of caution to the wind. And I can't help but think that now, finally, I am doing some brave--at the very least true to my own heart. Allowing myself to trust myself, and to get some writing out there.