Thanks, John Elder Robson

Ever since the very first day that I started this ridiculously wild and fanciful ride that has become my new life, from the day that I sat down and wrote Something Bigger Than Me, I’ve been truly blessed and awkwardly surprised to have been surrounded by people who champion my cause, read what I say, feel what I feel and even feed my enthusiasm for what it is that I’ve chosen to do.

This blog was started as a memoir – I even ridiculed the word – with the concept in mind… What would happen if an ordinary mum woke up one day and decided to do something extraordinary? What if they decided to give of themselves everything they could rationally and conceivably give? What if at times they even gave more than what was rational and conceivable!? What if they increasingly, over time became more and more in love with the idea that the true fruits of life where actually to be found in service to others… and carried on the mythical winds of change to some whimsical destination where all living things are equal and yadda, yadda, yadda… you get the picture.

For whatever reason, people started to read and become inspired by the notion that all is not yet lost. And as we know, like attracts like, so it stands to reason my blog is read primarily by people who have not yet closed their minds to the fact that I could be onto something… closely followed by those who are waiting to see me fall on my ass for the last time, so they can get up and say “I told you so”. Fortunately for me, the positive group have been the most vocal, with the more rowdies only showing their heads briefly when they thought they had won (Soz… not yet).

In the last week or two, however, I’ve been taken both by work and by pleasure to completely alien territories where the audience doesn’t really know if they agree with me or not, because frankly – they just don’t care. I’ve been paddling around in the choppy waves of apathy, basking on the beaches of indifference and I’ve been about as popular there as a grade 9 maths teacher spouting trigonometry. And you know what? It feels good.

As much as I love the encouragement and the feedback, and the enrichment that I get here in my comfort zone I am, for want of a better phrase, preaching to the choir.

I am a writer, I’m not a visionary, I’m not overly inspired or educated and I am certainly not an intellectual. Fundamentally, first I am a mum and second I am a writer, and while I don’t make a big deal of this – I also don’t keep it a secret – I’m also Aspergian, and I say this only because I need to use it to portray what I’m feeling.

In the book Look Me In the Eye by John Elder Robson, the author tells of a constant feeling of being a fraud. And perhaps this is something that you can relate to without having Asperger’s Syndrome, but this resonated with me.

John Elder Robson describes in a vocabulary that I could only ever hope to be able to use how his mind works, how he was capable of engineering technical wizardary for stage shows, elaborate electric special effects guitars for such rock legends as KISS but all the while carrying a feeling of being an imposter. When the inspiration and the knowledge and the desire all come from a place that you can’t put your finger on, you know where to find it and when you continually call on it, it keeps coming back – but you’re not capable of explaining how.

And it’s this discomfort, this being out of place that creates the greatest achievements, because nothing extraordinary is ever achieved in a comfort zone. So you call on all of your inner strength and confront the feelings, and stand up and continue.

You turn away from the choir and finally face the congregation and this is what you stood up for, this is where lives are changed.

Perhaps it’s some sort of self-deprecating internal mechanism built in to everyone that says “You don’t belong here! You don’t fit amongst these people. Who do you think you are?!”And whilst you can rationalise with yourself that you do know what you’re talking about, and you affirm all that you believe. Still that nagging, underlying question…that knot in the stomach that says “RUN!”

John Elder Robson didn’t run and neither am I.