Please Yourself<\/p>\n
I was at a Christmas Eve gathering\u00a0at the home of a couple of my dearest friends. There was joy and celebration.\u00a0Good food. Twinkling lights. Candles. People smiling and being kind to each\u00a0other, all dressed up in their party clothes.<\/p>\n
When I was getting ready to leave, a woman approached me. Her name was Barbara and she had blonde hair, beautiful\u00a0skin and kind eyes. \u201cI heard somone call you Andrea,\u201d she said. \u201dAre you Andrea
Cagan?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes,\u201d I said. \u201cThat\u2019s me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Barbara caught her breath for a\u00a0moment and she began to explain what my weekly blog has meant to her over several\u00a0years. She praised my writing, my honesty and my vulnerability. I was floored
by her appreciation. It was deeply satisfying to know that this weekly blog I\u00a0write (I\u2019ve done over 350 of them) could mean so much to someone I was meeting\u00a0for the first time.<\/p>\n
When I post my blog on Substack and\u00a0Facebook, I have no idea who will read it and who will be touched by it. It\u00a0feels like I\u2019m writing into the wind sometimes with an unknown landing site. But\u00a0I keep on doing it. I search for something in my life that has happened that week\u00a0and as I write about it, it feels like I\u2019m having a discussion with another person.\u00a0Meeting somone who said it helped her in her daily life was a gift to me. It gave
my work meaning and it felt like it was worth the effort. It reminded me that\u00a0when you\u2019re finished writing something, you push it out of the nest and you\u00a0have no idea where it will land.<\/p>\n
In this phase of my life, writing\u00a0means something different than it used to. During the 1980s, I went on multiple\u00a0trips to the Philippines to research the famed faith healers. After my third\u00a0trip, I realized that I had witnessed s something that very few people knew about\u00a0and I decided to write a book. As I wrote, I imagined getting a book deal, I wanted\u00a0it, and finally, after three long years of submissions and countless\u00a0rejections, my dream came true. Simon and Schuster bought my book and their marketing\u00a0department set up a plan for me. The book did very well.<\/p>\n
Times have changed. Today, book deals\u00a0are all about social media. Instead of putting together a plan, the publisher\u00a0wants to know how you intend to market your book. How many followers do you have? How many platforms do you use?<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not willing to do all that work\u00a0but I am willing to write every day and post a weekly blog, just for the sake\u00a0of doing it. When I begin, sometimes I know exactly what I want to write about\u00a0and I get started. But usually I have no idea what will show up on the page and\u00a0it doesn\u2019t matter. Sometimes I do two or three beginnings and finally settle on\u00a0something that\u2019s meaningful to me. If it helps someone else, so much the\u00a0better.<\/p>\n
There was a time when I didn\u2019t write\u00a0unless I had an end game in mind. That\u2019s understandable. Most artists have a\u00a0desire to get our work out and get feedback. Positive, we hope. But it\u2019s\u00a0important not to be limited. A woman I know has published a number of\u00a0mysteries. They have done well, she has new ideas ideas for plots, but
recently, her longtime editor retired. She hadn\u2019t found a new editor and she\u00a0was distraught. \u201cI miss writing,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel lost.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy don\u2019t you write about how\u00a0you\u2019re feeling?\u201d I suggested. \u201cIt\u2019ll give you something to do while you look for\u00a0another rep. It\u2019ll make you feel better.\u201d<\/p>\n
She shook her head vehemently. \u201cI\u00a0can\u2019t do that. I can only write when I have a book deal.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Getting your work out is one reason\u00a0to write but there are other reasons. French diarist, Anais Nin said, \u201cWe write\u00a0to taste life in the moment and in retrospection.\u201d I\u2019ve come to accept the fact\u00a0that my work may only get read by friends. Still, I write because it helps me stay\u00a0present with myself. It helps me express my joy and accomplishments and my sadness\u00a0and failures. The ultimate reward is in the doing. That\u2019s the only part of this\u00a0that I have control over.<\/p>\n
The adage, \u201cWriters write,\u201d has\u00a0great meaning for me. It\u2019s the same with \u201cPainters paint. Dancers dance. Composers\u00a0compose.\u201d There\u2019s nothing to wait for. I simply feel better when I write and\u00a0worse when I don\u2019t. It helps me face the day and it gives my life purpose. Isn\u2019t
pleasing myself a worthy enough reason? As someone who lives alone, I\u2019ve\u00a0learned to appreciate beauty, even when there\u2019s no one to share it with. You may\u00a0choose to live alone like I do or you may have lost someone. Whatever the reason,\u00a0learning to do something by yourself because it feels good is a worthy goal.<\/p>\n
If you think you should be writing, don\u2019t bother. Nothing good will come of it. However, if you want to write, there is a lot to gain. You don\u2019t have to figure out where it\u2019s going or who will see it. It has its own trajectory so don\u2019t interfere. I see each project with a set of wings and I trust it to fly where it wants to go.<\/p>\n
As I read back over these pages, I see\u00a0that I\u2019ve reached a place where satisfying myself is more important than satisfying someone else. It\u2019s a freeing feeling. There are no expectations or criticisms
involved. It\u2019s just me being me. Its about keeping my own counsel. It\u2019s about\u00a0turning to myself for soothing. It\u2019s about knowing that I always deserve it.<\/p>\n
\u00a0Harper Lee, author of \u201cTo Kill a Mockingbird,\u201d said, \u201cIf you\u2019re writing for an audience of one, you must please the one person you\u2019re writing for. Yourself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Please Yourself I was at a Christmas Eve gathering\u00a0at the home of a couple of my dearest friends. There was joy and celebration.\u00a0Good food. Twinkling lights. Candles. People smiling and being kind to each\u00a0other, all dressed up in their party clothes. When I was getting ready to leave, a woman approached me. Her name was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2591,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2592"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2592\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2593,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2592\/revisions\/2593"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}