A Moment of Digital Silence Teaches Me About My Written Voice.
It finally happened. Day 64 of my 70-day challenge and the internet crashed in a storm. No way to finish my article.
It was the brew of a storm, a missing Mifi charger, and the sudden death of all things internet in Bali.
I tried to struggle against it for a moment and then resigned myself to breathing and working on some notes.
What I realized as I was working on what I had originally intended to write and post was a change in my voice as I switched from topics on self-development to topics on politics.
Personally, I believe the two go hand in hand. More and more when I work with clients I realize we can only go so far together. There is a limit to what behavioral change, nutrition, meditation, time management, hypnosis, depth work, and the magic of the process can do.
At the end of the day, people find themselves limited by time, their financial resources, and a society of people that are becoming more and more isolated and anonymous due to their rush to fulfill the economic pressure.
If we want a healthier life for ourselves and our loved ones we need a healthier society and government.
The article I started is on the complications between free speech and cultivating healthy dialogue. Just writing about the experience of writing it puts me back into my self-development voice, one that works to find the balance in things, to find the soft point of the edge.
But when I’m writing in the context of politics itself my voice changes and I can’t pin down what this new state is.
The self-development and storytelling voice has a calm flow that allows me to pour myself into either side of an experience and speak from both.
The political voice is always spinning outside examples to show how extreme and absurd things feel in the current political spectrum.
It’s flippant and jaded. Keeps itself from being bruised too deeply in the chaos by applying sarcastic humor, a removed demeanor, and pretending to delight in the absurdity.
I think it’s based in frustration and hasn’t found an integrated center. To do so I would have to be able to integrate both sides of the discussion and that discussion is currently so vehemently divided and often twisted that there isn’t much room to bring it together.
Instead, there’s a bantering back and forth.
I feel that’s visible in my writing and even when I read it out loud to get a sense of flow (definitely recommend that to all writers) my voice changes.
It’s slower and deeper now, it softens the tone when speaking about self-development. It’s the tone I use with clients; grounded, centered, open.
When I read my political work the tone shifts, it’s fast, it has inflections that emphasis the hyperbolic and ridiculous, it’s cerebral, and feels emotionally distant.
It’s a trickster in the halls of power pointing out everyone’s shadow, the joker amongst the king and aristocrats, Loki amongst the gods.
Interesting that today is the day I lose my connection to the world abroad. I wonder if I’m meant to use this voice or find a way to shape it?
What about you?
Do you ever find your voice changes depending on what you’re talking about? Why do you think that is? Do you want to honor all those voices?
Love and share.
I’m starting something new. Writing every day as I put my random thoughts down on binary paper.
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