Bio Hazard

I've never found it easy to see myself.

I spend a lot of time in self-reflection. Besides being necessary to be effective in my work, it's also been something that is natural to me as an introvert. I like to talk about my experience, but when I'm asked to whittle myself down into 250 words or less, I get a little panicky. Not sure what that's about. Might be a good pathway for self reflection.

I'm other-directed. That means I think about whether other people are comfortable, whether other people feel cared for and tended. What others need. At the soul level. In my work, I think about this in questions. What do people need in order to learn how to think? To be able to love? To connect with their deepest self? To heal? To thrive? Sometimes I go a little overboard and don't give myself enough attention. During the COVID-19 crisis, especially the first year, it got a little out of hand and it was difficult to disconnect from work, which had invaded my home. Home is usually a sanctuary from work.

If we do things long enough, we create habits. 

If we bring awareness to our habits through self-reflection, we can choose differently if we want to make a change.

Change is hard. 

I'm thinking about all this because I need to write a bio for the anthology project. I have a bio. I have two versions of it. One I used for my book and the other I use for performances. Neither of them work for this project. I like to step back a bit in the bio so the work can step forward and speak. I usually write the bio from the third person perspective. For the anthology, we're writing bios from the first-person perspective and including our "why." 

Why do I write? Because I have to. Because if I don't, I am not me. 

That's not very lofty, but there it is. That's the truth of it. I'm like a honey bee flitting around a wildflower meadow. Sometimes I pause and go deep to gather the nectar. Pollen tends to collect on the textured spaces as I go. 

If you really want to know me, know what makes me tick, understand my "why," read my work. I tend to leave impressions of myself on the page. More of me is there than even I realize.

Creating Space: Three Months of Showing Up for What's Showing Up is a daily writing practice. Turns out that a lot of this writing explores the landscape of grief. My mother died shortly before I began this writing, and this is what I'm thinking about most of the time these days.

Katherine Cartwright has been blogging since 2012, and each year brings new wonders. She asks big questions of the small things in life.