Lost and Found
Many years ago I spontaneouly moved cross-county from the east coast of the US to the Rocky Mountains. It was before cell phones were ubiquitous but not before laptops. My friends and family all wanted me to call them - every night - to ensure that I was safe, unharmed, etc. I’m not a big phone person, so instead, I started a blog.
Every evening I wrote about what I had seen that day, the people I encountered, the thoughts I had while crossing from old, rolling mountains through the rust belt, across farmland and grasslands, and finally to the brash young mountains of the Rockies with snow year round on the peaks.
After I settled down, I continued to write every day in my blog. I wrote about the wondeful synchronicities as I found a job, a place to live, new friends - the people I encountered, the thoughts I had and always the land. In that daily writing of the commonplaces of my life, I found my writing voice. It was an exhilerating realization.
Finding my writing voice gave me the courage to apply for a masters program in communication as a non-traditional (older) student. My writing expanded from personal to academic. Instead of choosing the easy way through my degree and doing a project, I wrote a thesis and presented it for defense. By the time I was done, I felt ready to write a thesis but my advisor discouraged me from re-writing it as an exercise and instead he encouraged me to apply for a PhD and though I was even older, I was accepted again.
When I moved further west to attend university and settled in to a new city, there were no mountains. I realized how much I had depended on the landscape to know where I was. I felt lost in a city that was 5 times more populous than the small city I had just left (and 45 times more populous than the small town I lived in on the east coast). The university on the west coast had more professors in our one department than there were professors in the entire small college I had just graduated from. I went to the university to learn, to delve into studies that fascinated me, to connect with other scholars who were fascinated about their own topics. Apparently, I misunderstood the purpose of a PhD program - I wasn’t interested in following my professors ‘recommendation’ - to publish as soon as possible, before I had anything of substance to say, just to get my name in a journal and a journal on my CV. And as I struggled and refused to meet expectations that I hadn’t expected, I lost my voice.
I felt lost - and didn’t know how to find my way. So I left. I left the west coast, the big city, and the PhD program. I returned to the small city in the Rockies. I taught college writing to undergraduate students and ethics to graduate students. I watched the light shine out of my students’ eyes when they finally ‘got it’ about how to write, how to think, how to recognize what they valued, and why. But I had lost my own light. That exhilaration I discovered in writing about the commonplace of my life was gone.
I moved across the county four more times - to the rust belt, to the southwest, the northwest. I worked freelance - editing other people’s writing, but still couldn’t find my voice. I explored the nooks and crannies of the places I lived. I took long walks, had conversation with friends and strangers. I read great books, fun books, thought-provoking books. I took online classes. I moved back east to a comfortably small town not so far from where I had begun. I retired and recovered. And now, 18 years after I first found my voice and 12 years after I lost it, I’m ready to begin again.