Trying to rediscover my voice

I always feel like I have so much to write, so much that I want to write. So why is it that anytime I sit down to actually write my mind goes entirely blank? Even if I have a list of intended topics right in front of me, or a partial draft to work on, I start feeling like I have nothing interesting to say. The only thing I have much success in writing is these long, boring, self indulgent walls of text about how I feel about not being able to write. I don’t know, maybe I should just publish this. At least it will be some of my thoughts out in the world again.

Back in the early days of my blog it seemed to flow quite easily. I was confident, not really that what I had to say was correct, or insightful, or in any way important, but that it was not going to get me into trouble or draw criticism that I couldn’t handle. I naively thought that I could say whatever I wanted without fear.

Since I am a white, well-educated, straight cis man, I was largely right. The only time I felt any discomfort was when I posted a paraphrased recipe from a book and was threatened with legal action by the writer’s agent. While I was certain that legally I was in the clear (you can’t copyright a recipe), and felt that since I was strongly recommending people buy the book it was OK morally too, I deleted the post.

Of course I did. I’ve spent my whole life learning over and over that conflict is bad, it’s my responsibility to resolve it, and it probably is me being unreasonable anyway. Like a lot of ND kids, I learned early on that all these intense feelings and sense impressions (that I believed everyone felt) were not to be acted upon because doing so only brought trouble.

So I think after that experience, benign though it was, I started to doubt whether I could speak freely after all. At the same time I was awakening politically and learning that some of the beliefs I thought were obvious (e.g. that all humans had rich inner lives that affected how they thought/acted) were in fact not that common, and that stating them in particular ways could be seen as somehow controversial. I was also succeeding in my career and starting to internalise what I was told about what I said reflecting on my employer and colleagues.

However it happened, I had lost my voice.

Yes, in the sense of being literally unable to express myself in certain ways, but also in that I felt there was something I once had but had misplaced and desperately wanted to find again without knowing where to look. First it only affected my personal writing, but as the years went by it crept into my professional work too. Working in a large organisation is never not political; what you say affects not only your own standing and influence but also that of your team and department in the wider organisation, which is a heck of a responsibility. By the time I ended up in the public sector I was being regularly reminded that it was my job to remain neutral, impartial, disinterested. Eventually I stopped saying much at all, except to a few trusted friends and colleagues.

This is not my fault, exactly, but it is partly related to some very core parts of my personality. I know that breaking rules feels bad, feels dangerous. So when I’m told implicitly that regardless of the depth of my knowledge or experience my word isn’t good enough —that only things supported by concrete evidence are OK to say— I play it safe.

I see that not everyone plays by those rules, and that some don’t suffer any consequences for breaking them, but I’m unable to discern to my own satisfaction why that is or how to emulate it. Is it because they are brighter or more experienced than I? Are they party to information that explains how they are not, in fact, breaking rules? Do they have better understanding of what rules can or cannot be broken? Are they more mature and self-confident through experience? Are they simply confident because they have the privilege never to have been challenged and the power to carry it off through confidence alone? Maybe some of these are people I don’t want to emulate after all…

Still, there are glimmers of hope. I’m starting to become more aware of contexts where I feel less shackled and more able to express myself. Unsurprisingly, it’s usually when I’m under less pressure (external or internal) to “deliver” some “output” that meets some vague criteria, and when I’m working with people I know well and trust not to judge me personally if we disagree. It’s also easier when I retreat to that shrinking zone where I still feel like I can speak with some authority.

I’m looking for ways to put myself in that context more often. Right now I think that means identifying a small group of trusted colleagues at work that I can bounce ideas around with, and doing more writing in the various communities I find myself in. There was a long while when I didn’t feel I had the authority to speak even about my own lived experience. Two years of therapy, a lot of introspection, and the love of friends and family have brought me to a place where I no longer doubt my own experience of the world (well, not so much as I did — it’s a work in progress), which gives me a place of solid ground to build out from as I re-establish my faith in my skills, experience and judgement in other areas.

Well, this wasn’t the thing I was expecting to write when I started, but here we are. I guess we’ll see how it goes!