Jessie Thinks

I have been racking my brain about what I want to blog about. It’s almost laughable because I have so many things to talk about that I’m sure are all compelling and engaging…presuming I do a decent job of delivering. I even have a list of future blog subjects!

But the thing is, I think I want to be honest and vulnerable and put it out there that I don’t know my voice yet.

In writing for the family blog (https://lovetheowens.wordpress.com) that we had for so long I recall being able to put words on the page with relative ease. Now I’m finding a blank page quite daunting. In thinking about this for a while I realized that the Love the Owens blog had a set motif. It was easy to pick out the moments of recovery and celebrate those, it was even therapeutic to express grief in dealing with the loss of my parents. These were specific and direct subjects, and I knew who I was writing to: people who loved my family and me.

I now find myself basically back to where I wanted when I was thinking about my future, post-accident. Back to day-to-day life and not entirely focused on whatever my body needs every second of the day. This almost seems crazy at this point, I don’t know if you’ll believe me, but when talking with my life coach I told him all I really wanted to do was be able to say “ugh, I don’t want to go to work tomorrow.” Ha! Seems like such a crazy thing to wish! What I really wanted was to be able to have some purpose again, and that is what I am beginning to develop now.

My life today included going to the gym, eating a bowl cereal, walking the dog, checking Facebook, sitting down to figure out what to write, and a meeting in the afternoon. Nothing about the day was particularly interesting unless you count the HUGE ass spider I found in the house and had to find a way to scoop it up and put it outside with my barely functioning hands. I couldn’t kill it because I believe in spider karma– – and I just really don’t want to get one of those fuckers in my bed at night.

This is what I am struggling to figure out. Where does my value/desire/purpose come from, and what do I want to say? Do I specifically want to talk about wheelchair issues? Yes… sometimes. Do I want to write to individuals who have a spinal cord injury? Yes.., on occasion. It’s the figuring out what is in between that I’m really deciding where my voice is. I can’t imagine I’m the only one that has ever sat down and tried to write a paper and looked at a blank screen for 45 minutes before writing three sentences and then immediately deleting them all.

What I am interested in? Talking about travel, teaching and work, dogs, the struggles of day-to-day activities as a quadriplegic, funny stories, books, dealing with grief, and apparently now I am interested in talking about finding your voice again after some type of change.

Not specifically due to an injury, because I knew my voice right after the injury, I am now finding where I sit in a different capacity. I probably equate it to changing jobs, being promoted, moving across country, it’s fun and exciting and also scary. You get to decide who you are, and what you want to show the world of yourself.

I’d now like to congratulate the reader and myself for getting this far in the blog where the subject is ultimately… I have nothing to say!

On a positive note, I’ve got that paragliding thing coming up! So excited!