I can’t hear myself write

I’ve always had a diary of some sort, whether it be the teenage notebook heaving with introspection and injustice hidden under my bed, the scatty sketch pad stuffed into my bag, the backs of envelopes and fag packets wedged into the back of my Filofax and more recently the fragments of ideas, plans and grand designs scribbled onto post-it notes, pressed and left, like gaudy butterflies pinned to a board, gently curling on the wall behind my desk.

I see my thoughts now, spread all around me – yet always contained within a screen. I have Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram all containing different facets of myself – captured moments. Facebook I cannot engage with, it seems crass and shallow and too immediate for me. I am an observer, I like to watch and think and plan my words. Twitter is a path laid out before me with stones I can upturn to release 142 characters into the wind. Some explode like tiny bombs or firecrackers around my head, some settle like snow in my hair and melt slowly into my mind and some turn to dust and are carried away on the breeze forever.
Pinterest is the scrapbook I’ve always longed for, it’s a large house lined with cork in which I can move from room to room, pockets stuffed with pins and create self indulgent displays in each. My rooms have names – Ocean…Floating Homes…Images I Love…Places I’d like to go… Wise Words and I wander through them at times when I have nothing to do it nowhere to go. There is even a cellar in the house that I built earlier this year where I throw dark creatures quickly and close the door.
Instagram is my photo album, full of beaches, sunshine, boats, fresh baked bread and my beautiful laughing children.

So now I need to write again and I don’t know who I am?

I have spent years of my life writing reports, funding bids, policies, procedures, job descriptions, minutes of meetings, letters, emails, emails, emails, lesson plans, schemes of work, information handouts, course handbooks, development plans, staff appraisals, supervision notes …. and it goes on.

So I have been writing, yes, but these have been soulless words. Pages and pages of unremarkable, anaemic prose that has fit a purpose. Now I need to breathe life into my words, I want my writing to be profound, heartfelt, sincere and passionate. But where is my voice?

I can hear myself talk and I can see myself around me, I can see what I’ve done, I can see my achievements, my mistakes, I can see what I do, my life, my family, my work…I can look on Twitter, Instagram and the rest but I can’t hear myself write.

I can’t hear myself write.

To be continued….