To write, I first must world
Over the decades I’ve been on the internet, I’ve admired bloggers.
It’s beautiful to write on one’s own platform about anything that interests you. Especially when that writing wouldn’t easily be accepted on a platform that already exists.
But I’ve often felt like an outsider. That is, I never felt like a blogger myself. Why? Maybe because, despite admiring bloggers, I never felt like I would write about any of the same things they did, or in the same way, for whatever reason.
*
Somehow though, despite everything, I started blogging.
Over the past few years, I actually created a few different blogs. But I call them notebooks.
While easily overlooked, naming them “notebooks” is important. Traditionally a “notebook” is something you have multiple of … in the paper world, you often have different notebooks for different purposes. Whereas a “blog” feels like you have only one and it’s this monolithic thing. So inherently notebooks are less precious and more context-specific than blogs.
Going the notebook route allowed me to more easily write. In other words, I first created the world (the environment … feeling, constraints, audience, etc.), and then the writing came naturally.
*
While I said I felt like an outsider in the blogging world, it might be more true to say that I’ve felt like an outsider almost everywhere in life, not just blogging. This is likely why special friendships and work situations in which I’m appreciated for what I’m truly good at are so vital to me. I’ve also enjoyed using the internet to connect with others who feel different, to realize we’re not as alone as we may first believe.
This circles back to a larger idea I’ve been thinking about … “world-building as self-care.” For those of us who feel different, who don’t easily fit into structures of this society or this world, we have to make our own structures, definitions, and taxonomies to feel at home — that is, to build our own world. And while others might be confused why we spend so much energy inventing new names and containers seemingly constantly, it’s important to remember doing this helps us simply exist … so that we can connect in this one world we share.
Writing as sensory organ
Spiders think with their webs —
Spiders can tell from the vibrations what sort of insect they have caught, and hone in on it. There is a reason why the webs are radial, and the spider plants itself at the convergence of the radii. The strands are an extension of its nervous system.
In other words, you could say spiders’ webs are extensions of their minds.
*
Where does the mind end and the world begin, anyway?
This question dances in my mind just as beautifully today as five years ago, when I first encountered it.
I learned about the “Extended Mind Thesis” in a New Yorker profile in 2018. It featured Andy Clark, one of the philosophers and cognitive scientists behind the theory, which essentially shares that the mind does not exclusively reside in the brain, or even the body, but extends beyond and into the physical world.
For instance, let’s say you have an important notebook. Inside this notebook, you write down valuable information that you rely on regularly. If you lose this notebook, you’re actually losing part of your mind.
I remember feeling so at peace in an all encompassing, totalizing sort of way after understanding this. The mind doesn’t stop where the world begins, but extends into and through it.
*
Writing can be a memory aid, it's true. If I want to remember something, like something beautiful or useful my friend said, I can write it down. Now, my brain no longer has to remember the specific beautiful or useful thing my friend said, because I stored it safely in my notes.
There are other types of writing, of course. The spider's web reminds me that writing as a sensory organ. Or writing as a way of expanding my perception and connection to the universe.
*
It’s interesting it’s October now, as I like thinking of myself as a spider.
While spiders don’t write or publish (well, besides Charlotte in Charlotte’s Web), they do carefully build webs and wait patiently within their center, open to vibrations of their world. When I decide to write, I’m open to vibrations.
Writing as we often understand it (solitary, at the keyboard) is simply one part of a larger, more expansive cycle. Writing is an entire process, much of it enmeshed in the world.
It begins with vibrations. The vibrations could be things we’re intensely curious about; things we notice over and over. Or maybe the vibrations are useful and beautiful conversations we’re having with our friends.
The first draft of writing is always in the world. Sometimes it’s drafted in the air. Conversations let us understand the contours of an idea and publish something ephemerally for a moment, starting the process.
