Enchantment Everywhere

Last year, I lived an amazing adventure in the American Southwest. The rich, sensory experiences of this dazzling place delighted me, and I wanted to record and share them. Technology is not my sweetest spot, but I built a website anyway. With time, effort and occasional frustration, Encantado, Spanish for "Enchanted," was born. I was indeed enchanted --- by mountains and mesas and thunderstorms and aspen trees and roasting chiles and Ancient Puebloans and mornings made sacred with new snow and art and architecture and quirky state politics and margaritas. And oh, the sunsets. So many sunsets. I wrote about all of it.

So what now? Now that I am back in Northern California, Is it time to sunset Encantado?

Its brand was travel; the sights and sounds of a new place. Travel is a popular category in the blogging world. Everybody gets it. People who like these blogs tend to like the vicarious thrills—trips they won’t take, but experiences they get to have anyway. That makes sense. But does anybody really want to read about my adventures in Northern California, the same place they live? My lusty inner critic has an answer to that: “Hell no!”

But I’m not sure I’m ready to give up this practice of sharing. Every time a reader was moved to add their own ideas on a post, my own delight got multiplied. It created a shared experience.

There were times when I veered off brand. Something that had nothing to do with Santa Fe happened to me, and felt important, so I wrote about that too. Those posts—about my griefwork, or some journalistic piece I was writing, usually---generated some of the most comments.

So what’s the problem? Why not just keep writing and posting? Keep the domain but change the domicile?

I tell myself it’s because I’m not ready to fly without the safety net of the “travel blog” identity. Or because I’d have to develop another brand. But if I’m honest, I think there is something deeper going on here. And it comes down to this: I am weirded out by drawing attention to myself. The questions fly in like rabid bats:

Who wants to read about your life in Redwood City?

What adventures will you have here that could possibly be interesting enough to share with others?

You don’t want to be one of those tiresome people who’s always pushing their writing on others, do you?

Once these questions alight, others are right behind:

What about your psyche is so fragile that you can’t just write a blog like everybody else, let people read it or not, and get over yourself? and,

What the hell?

I think the answers to all this are about 60 years old. They reside in a Catholic schoolgirl who was taught at a very early age that it is really unseemly—sinful even—to ever draw attention to yourself. I can hear the questions above spoken in the nasal, high-pitched voice of Sister Ninian, my exceedingly mean 5th grade teacher.

Stock shot. Not Sister Ninian

Sister Ninian apparently thought she was put on this earth to keep children (especially girl children) from slipping into the sin of pride. Her reign of terror at St. Mel’s School went on for years. Blessedly, I was only in the fallout zone for one. But there were others in Sister Ninian’s unholy army of self-esteem killers, determined to make us more pious than proud.

I have talked to Adriana about this. Adriana is the spiritual advisor I found all by my grownup self, roughly five decades after I encountered Sister Ninian.

“Why don’t you have alerts on your posts?” she asked me after she read the first one. (Alerts tell followers there’s a new post on the site.)

“Ummm,” I mumbled. “Isn’t that kind of pushy?”

“Pushy?” she asked. “To give people a convenience—that they have asked for and can turn off anytime—for knowing when you’ve written something new? How is that pushy?”

A few posts later, she asked: “Why don’t you have a feedback button? I wanted to say something about the longevity story, but I had to write it in an email instead.”

Again, I fumbled the answer. “Well. It kinda assumes that I expect people to spend more time on this, doesn’t it?”

“More time? Like making them go to email instead of just clicking a button? Everyone knows what a feedback button is for. They expect it. Think about it.”

She’s right, of course. One of the greatest gifts Adriana has given me is this idea that all of us are allowed to set our own boundaries—in our personal relationships, in our sense of self, in what stories we choose to tell the world. Insisting on that isn’t selfish. It isn’t pushy. It’s healthy. It makes us better humans; more able to respond with compassion and generosity to others in our lives who might need us.

This has been invaluable for me as a grief counselor. Grieving people are notoriously bad at setting good boundaries for themselves. At their moment of greatest darkness, they try to say the right things, perform in certain ways, be strong and brave and take care of everyone else before themselves. It can be a gift for them to hear: do this in whatever way is right for you, especially now, when you are diminished by your trauma.

I may have some early damage to un-do in my view of how I take up space in the world. So this idea also helps me personally. I am taking baby steps in believing that I am allowed to place the lines where I want them.

So, where does that leave the blog?

Probably, at a fundamental question that I (and I’m guessing every other writer) gets asked all the time: Why do you write?

I write because I think I have something to say. It’s about that simple.

And if what I write creates some kind of deeper connection with a fellow traveler? When that happens, that’s not just words. That’s magic.