At the time of this writing, the Winder Place blog is not actually public yet. I’ve been writing content awhile in preparation for launching the website.
So if you’re reading this right now, that has changed. Winder Place has gone “live,” as they say.
But here, where I am now, writing these thoughts, that hasn’t happened yet. I’m still trying to navigate how that will happen, what I will be doing exactly, and what the implications will be.
To me, Winder Place is just a way to express myself. It’s a place for my ramblings and musings, for my art, for my stories, for my poetry, for my random ideas. But I hesitate to define exactly what Winder Place is because the moment I do, I’m limiting its potential to grow into something else. I had thought about calling it Winder House or Winder Press, but deliberately opted for the vaguer Winder Place because I knew it was more flexible—and it was the phrase that I heard somewhere in my heart when I first started searching for a name last November.
Since then, I did a complete rewrite of my story The Duet, which I’ve been planning to publish through Winder Place. It’s a story that means so much to me, but I’m struggling to figure out how I want to get it out to the world, or if I should at all. Often I feel like trying to get anything out to the world in any significant way is just a form of self-promotion. And there are few things that revolt me so.
The truth is, I want people to read it. I think the book has an important thing to say, and I don’t hear many people saying it yet. I also don’t know how to get it in the hands of others without a lot of marketing and promoting. I also lack the hubris to push that too far.
I feel like I’m just so sick of seeing everybody and their brother on the internet trying to change everybody else’s mind about everything. Whether it’s the political cartoons and snarky memes people post on social media, or the paid ads that take you to a website with a gigantic, in-your-face popup window begging you to sell your email address so you can get a free digital trash PDF—yeah. I’m just sick of it.
And my personality tends to be a bit avoidant in nature. It’s a way to stay safe and to not become the one thing I most dread becoming—a self-promotional has-all-his-ducks-in-a-row-and-an-answer-to-everything kind of guy.
Why am I so terrified of this? One, because it sucks. You can’t have a relationship with somebody who isn’t approachable. You can’t have a relationship with somebody who is never wrong. Two, because I’ve known people like that, and they suck, too. You can’t have an honest conversation with them. You have to go meet them in their fantasy land full of caricatures and stereotypes where everything is black and white, good versus evil, and there are no shades of gray, no nuance, no third options, no other truth but theirs.
Somehow, in my own self-condemning way, I manage to see myself as being that kind of prick. I love things of a fantastical nature; somehow, my self-condemning side convinces me I’m too disconnected from reality and not humble enough. I love talking to God, and talking to others about the love and truth I’ve found in him that is ultimately so much different than what I grew up with. Yet somehow my self-condemning side convinces me I’m a snobbish expert who has everything figured out. In the end, I get discouraged and wind up hating myself more than I did before.
The thing is, when we run from the darkness, or fight the darkness, it still controls us. I’ve spent a ton of time belittling myself in tiny ways each day as I try to avoid becoming the darkness I fear. Perhaps I’ve kept my mouth shut when I really wanted to say something, simply because I was afraid of disrupting everyone else’s illusions about me, since that’s easier than being heard for who I really am. Perhaps I’ve created something incredible and then showed it to nobody because I was embarrassed to be seen. Perhaps I’ve kept my emotions and problems to myself because I’ve been afraid of being a burden to others. Perhaps I won’t publish The Duet because I’m afraid of being published even though it’s actually been my dream since I was a kid. I think I’m always so worried about being seen as cheesy, insincere, arrogant, inconsiderate, idiotic, pushy, misguided, or heathen, and I end up deciding it’s better and “more mature” to not say or do anything at all. I still play the acceptance game, and I want to be liked. I can never claim one hundred percent pure motives about any endeavor. I can always find a reason why I should talk myself out of something. I second guess myself all the time. Ultimately, I grow disheartened, and my newest work ends up atop a pile of other unfinished projects.
In such very typical manner, I’ve been hitting a roadblock with Winder Place. Part of me is burnt out trying to navigate the technical and legal tedium of creating a web-based “business” of sorts. Part of me is terrified of what other people will say when they finally see it. The more that time passes, the more of myself I put into this thing and the more scared I am of letting it be seen without going through with a fine-tooth comb to re-edit it to be more presentable. And part of me just feels discouraged. What’s the point anyway? My goals aren’t even very well-defined at all, in absolute rejection of standard business advice. Not that it even is a business. What is it, anyway? And who is going to take the time to read anything I write? In the end, does it matter? But if it doesn’t matter if anybody bothers to read or see my stuff, then why bother putting it out there in the first place? To influence people? For a “good cause”? I gave up trying to change other people a long time ago. It usually doesn’t work, and I might even be the one who is wrong!
I think what I really want to do is just tell my stories, and my story. And live it out in this space as well as all the spaces I did before. People don’t need to understand the stories or learn something or “get” something from them. And yet maybe they still will.
I wrestled in a previous post with the question of whether my acts of supposed self-expression were really a form of self-imposition. Does the internet really need one more guy on a blog spouting ideas? I’ve found in my personal life that it’s often best to keep my thoughts to myself. In large part I have done it out of shame, because I’m afraid to be seen by others. But I’ve also done it out of practicality and respect. Human beings are so used to having other humans steam-roller their opinions with criticism that even expressing an alternative point of view sometimes sounds like a threat. There is of course nothing wrong with two people having very different opinions. But just as I might choose to avoid taking a friend with PTSD to a movie theater (where the loud noises might frighten him), so likewise I have found that keeping my opinions to myself keeps people calm. But sometimes, it keeps me stifled and feeling like I’m misunderstood. How can I really be loved if nobody knows who I am and how I feel? But if people did know, perhaps they would be through with me!
And so I go in circles through my head. One thing leads to another, and pretty soon I’m back to asking whether I should move forward with Winder Place at all when I already had the question settled half a dozen times before.
So this time, I do it here in writing, on the blog. Writing helps me process my thoughts better. And maybe sharing our own adventures, doubts, turmoil, and silliness is one of the best ways to express ourselves authentically. So here you go. I don’t have my ducks in a row, and even when Winder Place goes public, I still won’t have them lined up any better. And maybe that’s okay.
I think my big questions as of late have been:
- Do I risk expressing myself at all? How vulnerable should I be? How much is too much? How much is me hiding?
- If I do express myself, in what ways? Shall I keep writing on this blog? Where else? On Facebook? Twitter? Instagram? Is having a newsletter really a good idea too? Will I be so busy with these things and with running Winder Place that I won’t even have time to write the books for which the company exists in the first place? Writing pithy statements on Twitter sounds kind of fun. But having one more soul-sucking social media platform to monitor all the time sounds like a nightmare. Especially if the pithy statements have to be scheduled to keep my audience “engaged,” as marketers might say. (That smells more like manipulation to me than anything.)
- What if I’m wrong? Most of my opinions aren’t completely fleshed out yet. I’m still learning and exploring. Undoubtedly, I believe in something that’s a bald-faced lie—I just don’t know what it is yet. What if I end up being the one who spreads the lie to others?
- How do I promote The Duet? Most of the self-help author marketing websites and blogs I have read don’t even bother to consider whether we’re being too self-promotional. They assume you’re going to promote the crap out of your work. To me, marketing is one of the most distasteful fields there is. (Apologies to all the salespeople and marketers out there who do this for a living.) Maybe it’s not so bad if you’re trying to sell toothbrushes or something. Where it gets really bad is when you’re trying to promote something of a spiritual nature. And most of my books have spiritual (not religious BTW) themes. People are so accustomed to having religion crammed down their throat that I think they’re a bit gun shy, and they ought to be. I don’t want to preach at people. I don’t want anybody to have to hear my voice unless they want to. But I want to sing. Like, really sing. And I can’t just do that in my head. I have to make my passion into a baby. I have to consummate my belief. Is there a way I can speak up without speaking at?
In a way, publishing myself has felt a bit like making a baby. In fact, that is the metaphor H.L. and I have been using to describe many things happening in this season of my life. (If you want to know about H.L., read my bio.) I’m expecting; I know something is coming out of me into the world soon. That includes The Duet and Winder Place, but that also includes a much fuller gamut of expressions from my heart (such as finally coming out publicly about H.L., which only a few years ago would have been unthinkably preposterous). And when Winder Place, and my books, and everything else inside of me starts going out into the world, I want it to grow up and walk around on its own two legs. I don’t want to be the one standing over its shoulder telling it what I think it should do. I don’t want to be that kind of parent. Again, that’s why this isn’t called Winder Press. I want this baby to surprise me! I want this to grow up into whatever it wants to be.
And in that sense, maybe many of my questions and fears are moot. This will all be what it will. Perhaps just like a pregnant mother, I am both an active participant in my own work, my own writing, my own journey, my own healing, my own baby—and I am also completely out of control. I have to learn to trust my own body to put the baby together in the best way. I have to learn to trust my own heart to express itself in the wider universe in the most forceful, thoughtful, careful, careless, well-planned, half-baked, beautiful, grandiose, humble, winderous way that it will. All the seemingly disparate realities, the what-ifs and fears, the faults and virtues of it all will come out in a beautifully disastrous collage at some point sooner or later. And it will be perfectly in tune with my own heart—an expression that my own fears and insecurities will ultimately fail to hijack. I know that any expression of myself will be riddled with my fears and insecurities, which will have no problem screaming for attention and making themselves known. But instead of seeking to silence them, I can embrace them and give them the attention they desperately crave. I can show these needy children inside of me that I care for them. This is why many of my blog posts start out with an issue I’m wrestling with; I write about the things I fear. The things that terrify me and keep me up at night. They need not to be choked down and silenced; they need my compassion. They need to be written, seen, heard, and properly put to rest and tucked in bed. Perhaps some will see my insecurities, weaknesses, and neediness as the blight of my site, but I do believe love redeems ALL things, even the ones we see as bad. I think maybe these things can become a blessing to others and maybe that’s how I will ultimately heal. I won’t heal because I stop being a needy person; I’ll heal because I was needy to the fullest extent, embraced my neediness, cherished it, and let it grow up into the fullness of its own self, something beautiful and mature.
So in the interest of honoring my own neediness, I want to let it speak here. I want people to love Winder Place, and to love me. I want people to love The Duet as much as I do and be touched to the core by what I have to say. I want to sell a million copies and make a billion dollars. I want to succeed at changing the relational culture of our world.
And yet none of that is what I want at my core. My heart wants to be, and to be loved as it already is. My heart wants to express itself and cherish itself even if nobody else does. My neediness wants money; my heart wants the freedom to be more generous in the world. My neediness wants to change the culture; my heart wants to heal and be healed. My neediness wants fame; my heart wants to find that special sense of being fully seen, fully known, and fully loved—by real people, not by a faceless mob, not just by “people.” Even though my heart already is dearly loved and seen by my H.L. and by myself, we want to see the circle of relationship and knownness grow and ripple outward as slowly as that comes.
In voicing what my heart wants, what I want at my core, I don’t need to ridicule my neediness and its desires. I get to still acknowledge that it’s there. I can honor these surface desires and dreams by attending to the deeper, corresponding ones of my heart.
I no longer have to run from the darkness. I can, in fact, embrace it. When it is embraced, accepted, and nourished, it will heal and become what it was truly meant to be. The shadows will glow when love arrives.
I get to heal the darkness, and I get to run towards the light and enjoy the sunshine. That will always be enough. I don’t have to fight, run from, or succumb to the darkness.
And what of the future of Winder Place? Who knows? Who knows what it will become, or when it will become it? Who knows what the process will look like? Who knows when you’ll even be able to read this? These may be phrased as rhetorical questions, but there is an answer.
The heart knows. It knows only the minimum it needs to know in any moment, but it knows perfectly. And when I ask it to answer the rambling questions I have, it tells me this: “Honey, it’s going to be okay. You are so beautiful, and you’re becoming more beautiful and more you with every passing day. It’s not a perfect process but a perfect dance—like a waltz: two steps forward, one step back. Love is already here and yet will still arrive. Run towards the light and enjoy it, because you’re already here surrounded by sunshine! The things you wait for will come to pass in the fullness of time; meanwhile, persist in the fullness of who you are. Okay?”
What else can I say? Okay. ❤️
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