Milestones

Voice.

Sigh. I’ve been struggling to find it lately. I set out at the beginning of this year on a writing pursuit, seeking to find, speak, know and share my own voice in new ways. I wanted to share my voice with new resolve in this particular medium, yes, but more importantly in the broader strokes of my life. Since then, my writing has been virtually nonexistent.

This past week I’ve been celebrating my oldest son, Little Drummer Boy, turning seven years old. As many mothers can relate, the birthdays are almost always bittersweet lumps of joy where my vision is quite clouded. I see him with all the new skills and interests and jokes and signs of independence. But somehow in the very same frame of the lens, I also see that little face resting on my shoulder, the tiny hand clutching mine and all the firsts I’ve witnessed that have now turned into his beautiful habits. As I was reminded by a friend, a “happy birthday” to LDB is a “happy birthday” to me as well, for a mother always has an intimate recollection of birthdays.

With much less fanfare, I’ve also been celebrating a personal milestone — the fourth birthday of this blog, EyeJunkie, on May 6. I started it in many ways because of LDB. I was at a time in my life where I felt I needed a personal creative outlet. My readers probably know that I’m creative for a living, like most of us are. I’m just called upon to do it in a much more overt way than most. I’m a designer. LDB thinks I draw for my work, and in many ways that’s true. But I started EyeJunkie in 2008 because I wanted a creative outlet that was apart from work for hire. I needed it. I needed something that would allow me to act out those creative tendencies in a more personal way. I needed to show him. I needed to show LDB, and Bug, and now Baby Girl what I was about on the inside. That’s the crux of it.

This space has been indelibly tethered to my voice ever since. So, to leave it unattended feels like a failure in many ways, like dropping the ball, like being out of the loop with myself. Do I even want to continue it? does it matter to me? Is it a valuable contribution to my life? A worthwhile investment? Can I continue it in a meaningful way? In some ways it feels like losing ground, like losing my voice. But, I know my voice is there. Somewhere. And that need for a creative outlet apart from work is still there. Somehow.

When I launched the whole “voice” thing for 2012, I wrote this:

To be able to hear the sound of our own voices with clarity sure simplifies things. It makes choices and decisions much more obvious. It makes the worthwhile investments of our time and energy much easier to find.

Those statements still ring true in my heart. I still see the necessity of hearing my own voice. Of discerning my own core requirements for a life of blessing. Of determining my own parameters of what constitutes a life of significance. Of rigorously chasing that life with daily decisions. Of giving the gift of that life to my children.

As I’ve been processing these two milestones, I’ve recognized that I HAVE heard my voice in many areas. I HAVE made decisions and movements that reflect my own voice. I have begun to more deeply refine my work life with Small Pond Graphics so that it serves me rather than vice versa. I have begun to reclaim control of areas of my life and relationships where I felt I had surrendered my own voice. I have begun to step outside of fatigue or busy-ness or laziness to create more significant experiences for my children, to recognize and incorporate habits of joy into their lives in small things. These are all urgings I heard from my own voice. And I’m beginning to speak them each day in tangible ways.

Here’s the thing. The writing isn’t the thing. The living is the thing. The doing. The growing. The learning. The listening.

It’s all those things that make the writing something — something that enriches all that I glean from the living and doing and learning. Through this soul searching, I’ve recognized that I write to keep my heart and my voice close to the surface. I do it to clarify my voice. And I do it to recognize  the sound of my voice as I’m living. And that makes it valuable. To me.