Shut Up
why I won't be doing that (and you shouldn't either)
The November sun is coming through our windows, laying like slabs of yellow butter on the floor of our home. My kids are watching a well-earned cartoon after working their minds through school. Billie is napping. Jonathan is working from home in our bedroom. I’m writing.
But I don’t know what to write about.
My brain is telling me nothing I could put into these tiny black pixels and send off to you could be remarkable enough to make an impact. I’ve lived long enough with this brain of mine to know when it’s lying. This is one of those times.
Now, I’m not prideful enough to be able to guarantee that you reading whatever I write today will be all that remarkable but how prideful is it for me to say I know it won’t be?
I cannot predict the future. I don’t know if something you read from me will be what you needed to hear. As a finite and flawed human, it’s presumptuous to base my actions on the fact that I can guarantee very, very little.
And so, I’m humbling my brain, trusting God with the outcome and sitting down to write.
I’m writing this in the early afternoon. Lunchtime. My mind feels like a jumbled desk of half-written notes, partially used planners and sticky notes covered in creases and coffee stains.
I don’t know when my Creative Self started to unravel like this.
Maybe it was when Jonathan switched to a “better” job and because we’d prayed so hard for it, I felt bad talking about how stressful that transition was behind-the-scenes.
Maybe it was when I got Covid and lost an entire month recovering.
Maybe it’s when I was in the hospital on meds that gave me a full blown panic attack and my husband couldn’t be with me so I had to work through it scared and alone.
Maybe it was the morning I laid in bed talking to Jonathan about the existential crisis I’m having at 33 years old because I’m realizing how most of my life choices were influenced by the fundamentalist cult I was raised in even though I thought I broke away from it.
Maybe it was when my therapist said the relational fallout I’ve walked through recently was a betrayal and diagnosed the uncontrollable physical reactions I keep experiencing as trauma responses.
Maybe it was when I decided on a whim to upload an 8 second video to TikTok and now I have an audience of almost 6,000 people I don’t know what to do with there. ( I’m grateful—it’s just that I cannot properly express how weird it is to spend over a decade trying to grow an audience to support my work on Instagram and then have more followers than I’ve ever had just because I’ve made a few videos about Tolkien).
Like I said, I don’t know when I started to feel so unraveled. Regardless, here we are.
The sun has crept up from the floor and is pooling on the table I’m writing this from. The house is blessedly quiet except for the tip-tap of my keyboard, a bright cartoon in the living room and the hum of my own brain (still) trying to derail me from getting any writing done.
Yet, I persist. Maybe this isn’t the forum for all these clutter-pile thoughts. Maybe this should’ve stayed as a journal entry. Maybe my brain is right.
Or maybe you’ll read this and feel the nudge to not give up either.
That’s enough to keep my butt in the chair for an hour or two to make sure these words end up where you can read them (even if my brain is still trying to get me to shut up).
The sun is sliding up our walls now. I need to get up. Figure out supper. Walk the dog. Enjoy the light before it winks out in the West much sooner than I’d like.
By the time you read this, it’ll be a new day where you and I (Lord willing) get to wake up and keep trying.
Isn’t that beautiful? I think so.
And I won’t shut up about that.
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I hope you enjoyed today’s post. On Thursdays, I send out posts like these to paid subscribers only, but today I wanted to send this free post out to paid and free subscribers in case you’re reading this and could use some quiet encouragement popping up in your inbox once a week.
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See you next Thursday! 🤍
I sat down to write recently, and something very similar came out. I observed the textures and the light and the noises around me, and then finally, finally, I was able to put something else on paper. It’s very encouraging to see you going through that same process! I’m sometimes struck by how many parallels we seem to share (a cultish upbringing that I’m still processing, a painful betrayal last year, a hospitalization this year), and I am ALWAYS touched by the words you share as you write your way through it. It gives me glimpses of how I can use my own words. Thank you, Breanne!
I’ve been dragging my feet on starting a assignment that I need to do. It’s should be a lovely communication but I don’t want to deal with thing right now. SO thank you. This really encouraged me because I need to talk myself into starting again.