When your partner looks at you across the breakfast table and says, “You aren’t being authentic” while you’re eating pancakes, it feels like a knife in the heart.
First of all, my soul is made of pancakes so I was as authentic as I could possibly be in that moment.
Second of all, since my authentic self has a wildly unhinged sense of humor and a lot of feelings - and I’ve been trying to keep a lid on a lot of that lately - I guess it’s true.
I’ve definitely fallen prey to some of those misguided “I am an adult and thus must be a perfect reflection of society’s construct of a responsible human” beliefs. Pro tip: Don’t do that. I’d much rather be a free range weirdo.
Our conversation about authenticity was actually in reference to my work and my writing. Since my job for the past number of years has basically been “help people get their shit together” (albeit in an unconventional way), I’ve felt like I need to have my shit together. Since I don’t have my shit together - at least not in the socially acceptable way - I haven’t wanted to talk about it, which has hamstrung my ability to communicate and share in the way I used to and really enjoyed.
I haven’t wanted to write about my real experience, because my real experiences don’t feel like something you can have if you’re also attempting to help other people. Yes, I hear all the things wrong with that sentence.
While I did have it together in the culturally-conditioned way - good job, paying rent on a house, etc - in my twenties, my older self has her shit together in a more real way. Less social currency, but more ability to function in a way that works for me and my brand of peculiarities. My older self is more, one might even say, authentic.
Maybe I also stopped because I thought I had to outgrow my weird, unhinged self the way I once thought I had to abandon cartoon t-shirts on the altar of being a mature adult.
Since I still wear t-shirts with llamas riding bicycles, maybe I get to reclaim my unhinged writing style. While I’ve become (arguably) more authentic to myself and who I am and what I want and need, my writing has become less so.
Really, I just want to return to the wildly unhinged blogging days of yore, when it was 2006 and we weren’t worried about branding or selling or SEO or anything much beyond LET ME TELL YOU WHAT MY DOG JUST DID. NOW I’M WRITING A RESUME FOR MY DOG. HERE’S MY DOG IN HIS BEST WORK ATTIRE, NOW FIELDING OFFERS and then posting a picture of your dog in a tie?
Remember those halcyon blogging days? I want those back. Because that style of writing was fun and endorphinizing and helped me write myself to answers, answers my current self could really use. It felt really true to me, in a way the current style - at least the style I’ve adopted - doesn’t.
I just want to write about my nonexistent dog in a nonexistent tie.
Whatever happened, most of my writing over the past few years has been sadly hinged, rather than gleefully unhinged.
Yesterday’s solar eclipse was smack dab over my midheaven - meaning, big changes are coming in my career. I’ve been feeling this for weeks - the chaos is real, my friends - and thusfar it seems to mean returning to the way I used to write.
Do we have to share all the messy parts of our lives in order to be authentic? That gong you hear is a resounding no from the universe. Do we have to be sanitized versions of ourselves to help other people? That’s another big no gong.
But here’s the thing: For whatever reason, I can’t get there. I don’t seem able to write the way I want to without sharing the mess in a way that I won’t do if I’m doing my current work.
Honestly, I feel a little betrayed by the fact that I’m not going to know what yesterday’s eclipse did to my career and writing for quite awhile yet. I want to know now. I want to know if the only way I can go back to being Unhinged Amber is to shut down my business. I want to know if I just need to scale way back so I have the time and energy and don’t feel the need to present myself in any particular way, but can still do the work I do love doing in many respects.
Or do I just need to find a job and focus on unhinged blogging and writing my books in my off hours?
I don’t know. But maybe if I keep writing whatever I want to write, those answers will come.