A couple of years ago I was struggling to find my voice. I would create documents and scatter thoughts upon them, share them and then let them sit. A couple of months later I’d do it again in a new document, thinking, “maybe if I change the platform I can get my ideas out.” Google Docs, Word, Pressbooks, WordPress, Medium, and on and on. It wasn’t the platform. It was me.
I didn’t have a voice. I couldn’t find my voice. I’d lost my voice? I never had a voice that I thought worth sharing or worth listening to.
So, I struggled and kept creating new documents. And then (as is my process), I got so annoyed with myself that I tried something. I created a new slide deck — I called it my ‘rant’ deck. It kept growing! I took risks in it, said things in a voice that wasn’t just regurgitated from somewhere else. It felt good and horribly risky — the kind of risky that makes your cheeks burn with heat. The same risky I felt when I first started using Twitter.
But I did it. And I reached out to someone for feedback and then someone else. And Tara Robertson and Karen Lauritsen and Vera Roberts and Angela DeBarger and Robin DeRosa and Amanda Coolidge and Lisa Petrides and Maha Bali and Kaveh Nia and Sara Hendren and Jutta Treviranus and Brian Cantwell Smith, (and more) each in their own way encouraged this voice-finding-quest. In many ways they encouraged it by being brave themselves — sharing their ideas, writing them down, being open!
And so, I created more slide decks and I started to share them on Slideshare and I kept doing it. It felt risky, but not cheek-burning risky. I still (always) feel unsure and vulnerable always, but I try to heed the warning of those little voices and still push ahead.
I feel as though I’m on the other side of some big hump. And somehow I found a voice that doesn’t make me entirely nauseous. And now I have to push again — to writing. I haven’t written these thoughts down and I need to. I can feel and see the power of the written —
Robin DeRosa held a mirror up for me when she transcribed something I’d said in a conversation on Virtual Connecting. She did it mere moments after I’d said the words — it made my cheeks burn again. And it felt like a kind and firm push — write it down ‘grasshopper’ (as Lisa Petrides would say) and do it now.
So, I’m gonna give it a try! Full-speed, burning cheeks!