Answering QUESTions

This morning, I pressed the snooze button with special fervor, convinced that my intense dreams were trying to give me some nugget of wisdom. I felt swept away in philosophical pondering, moored to reality by the sound of my husband taking a shower.

“The answer is in the question.” I woke up with this phrase stuck in my mind. I scribbled it into my journal before I even wiped the eye-crumbs out of my lashes.

The Answer is in the Question. 

What does that even mean? It sounds profound. It sounds like nonsense. It was like I had a dream koan to worry around in my head like a river rock.

My burning questions – the ones I’ve gone to bed with for the past few nights – are scattered across a few different topics.  None of them really have answers. Or, at least, the answer to most of them is “we will just have to find out, won’t we?”

I signed up for a class from Tracking Wonder called Artmark last month. I went into it yearning for a cohesive vision, a way to take the disparate things that I put out into the world into a single brand. A brand for me. Something that allows me to market myself, my work, my expertise, my unique mojo.

I once had three different Twitter accounts to be able to hone in on separate audiences – one for writing, one for search, one for gluten-free stuff. It was a relief when I finally coalesced them all into a single account. Sure, I lost followers in the transfer. But I became wholly me.

There’s a part of me that wants to split into different parts of myself again. And the part of me that was deeply relieved by having a single whole version of myself resists that urge.  I’m doing the homework for ArtMark, and I run into a lot of examples of what I don’t want to be.  Of course, I don’t run into anyone working  quite the same mojo as me – that’s the whole point. However, I do see some unflattering comparisons.

There’s an urge within me to write things down – and to post them up – things that don’t belong anywhere. Things without context or backstory. They don’t belong on this blog. I’m not sure what to do with them.  For now, I’m writing them anyway. But I’m waiting to post them up until I see where the ArtMark program takes me.

It’s already got me digging deep.  (The photo is a homework assignment I did last week for Art Mark called “Translating the Unseen.”)  We’re only on week 3 of a 13 week program.  I’m not quite sure where that’s going to end up.

Meanwhile, I’m bursting with ideas – creative and professional – and having a hard time keeping up with myself.  I’m going to keep exploring, because that’s all I can do right now.

The answer is not in the question. The answer is in the asking.