Hunger Pangs

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It happened again. I saw my words on another blogger's blog. For half an instant, before I could catch myself, my face twisted into a bitter scowl and an actual "Ugh!" escaped my lips. This is the first time I've actually heard one, having previously thought words like "Ugh!" only existed on paper.

In that very same half an instant (granted, it was a long half an instant), I thought to myself how these Heather word/idea sightings always meet certain conditions:

1. The blogger is well-established with a much bitter (whoops) bigger "following" than me.
2. The blogger is a contact of mine, but never offers me any direct feedback.

Yes I realize it's not only possible but quite likely that I'm a self-absorbed harpy with a good imagination and an inflated sense of word-worth. It's possible that these are all just coincidences. After all, I don't own ideas. And we all live in the same world so it's possible that we could have had the very same idea at the exact same moment and that we may have even used the exact same words to describe a particular feeling. It's possible.

It's also possible that the idea I offered you so freely out of a sincere want for you to succeed—that you decided to employ three days later and said as much on your blog—that I never expected you to thank me for but was miffed upon noticing that you not only did not thank me but thanked a third unrelated person in what I can only assume is another social-climbing strategy of yours—could have been forgotten and honestly re-dreamed up by you three days later. It's possible.

To have one's brain material and one's creative ideas borrowed without credit feels like a violation. That much is true. But these situations also offer us an opportunity for personal growth. What do we really want? Consideration? Kudos? Respect? Self-respect? Is public drama the best way to achieve that? It might be for some, but for me it just doesn't feel right. Calling out another blogger for things like these, unless it's so blatant that a calling-out is no longer a viable option but required in order to make sure some other blogger isn't similarly violated, is something I will never do. And no, that's not an open invitation to steal my stuff.

I've decided to take the advice of centuries of people who clearly have never had their mental babies taken to the park by another and twirled and displayed and presented as though they were their own. I've decided to feel flattered. If respected bloggers are borrowing or stealing from me it must mean that I'm doing something right.

It also makes me realize that I'm most likely not the only blogger whose idea shelf has been raided. It's quite possible that the ones doing the raiding don't have creative coffers of their own and borrow and steal to survive. As one who knows how painful it can be when the creativity refuses to flow, this just makes me feel sad. When all is said and done, I know that I was blessed with an endless spring, that the ideas will return and continue to flow through me until my heart stops beating. For that I will be eternally grateful.

Hopefully someday I will actually do something with my words and ideas so my family and I can reap the benefits before I'm old(er) and gray(er). I keep picturing us in a little cabin by the sea surrounded by books and an old typewriter and vintage board games. I need to write more often so I can improve. I realized a mere two weeks ago that I actually like writing. That it's not just a compulsion. Writing is accessible to all of us and not just the sport of Queens, PBS intellectuals and pompous elitists. I need to take writing seriously. And myself seriously for that matter. I can't control others, but I can stop shooting myself in the foot as soon as I get a tiny bit of steam rolling. I can stop being my own worst enemy.

If I were a better writer things like this would not happen to me. People wouldn't dare tread heavily on my personal writing space. Would they?

It's time for another self-reminder. It's the journey and not the destination. Never be fat and happy. Always be hungry. Someday, with a little bit of dreaming and a lot of hard work, my family will be doing the reminding for me in our cabin by the sea.

Hunger
by Emily Dickinson

I had been hungry all the years ;
My noon had come, to dine ;
I, trembling, drew the table near,
And touched the curious wine.

'T was this on tables I had seen,
When turning, hungry, lone,
I looked in windows, for the wealth
I could not hope to own.

I did not know the ample bread,
'T was so unlike the crumb
The birds and I had often shard
In Nature's dining-room.

The plenty hurt me, 't was so new, —
Myself felt ill and odd,
As berry of a mountain bush
Transplanted to the road.

Nor was I hungry ; so I found
That hunger was a way
Of persons outside windows,
The entering takes away.