Unlooked-for Adventures: Liz Huber on Writing and Listening to the Inner Voice
Often, when it comes to writing nonfiction personal essays, I’m drawn to tapping into events or thoughts that are either currently happening in my life right now, or significant moments from my past. I chose the items which need more resolving or reflection for further exploration through the craft of writing. This kind of exercise is my way of going through the cupboards of my mind, pulling things out, re-examining them, and either re-arranging them in my consciousness, or putting them back as something that can sit for another day’s future writing.
This is the process I used when coming up with my “Staring at the Ceiling” piece. For some reason, at that point in my schedule I was having problems sleeping all the way through the night. And, as I’d try different strategies to go back to sleep, one common theme emerged: the weird lights and shadows which appeared on my ceiling, and kept my attention from slipping away and going back to dreamland. Turns out I’d never fully addressed the events that culminated in those lights and shadows—all glowing from my husband’s latest acquisitions of old LP records and new stereophonic equipment to play them on. I started the essay thinking I was only writing about wanting to purge stuff from our home I thought unnecessary, but ended up in a different place than I’d anticipated. It’s surprises like that—I experience through writing— that clarifying thought and motivation—which is thrilling to me.
Writing about the how’s and why’s of the shadows cast on my ceiling felt like a cleansing and mind-drawer re-arranging that I’d needed to let go in order to reclaim rest. And that’s just what happened. I love when writing does this for me—resolving things so I can let them go and move on.
Turns out that I write because I’m one of those kinds of people who enjoy doing self-reflection and inventory within my mind. This work gives me insight into myself, and feels like a craving or better yet an itch that needs to be scratched. It’s oh-so-good when I find just the right spot by applying attention to it.
I’ve always been like this, but became even more so at the start of 2018, when, on reflecting on what I’d like to do for a New Year’s resolution, I decided that I would try to pay more attention to that inner voice (some call it the conscious—but I call it God) that we all hear from time to time, and follow it’s promptings. I had a good job working for our family business, which I helped create, designing graphic art, and doing merchandising. All that changed once I started paying strict attention to that little voice in my brain—paying attention to what thoughts were coming from me, and what thoughts felt apart from me, but coming into my brain. I threw bad, negative thoughts out, but kept the good thoughts, followed them through, carefully recording down the results, and within a month or two I found myself more and more able to recognize the different thoughts coming into my brain.
Plus, I began having interesting personal growth experiences, little successes, unlooked-for surprises, and better interactions in all my work and personal relationships. Better still, I also began having what I can only describe as grand, breath-taking adventures. One day a thought (which by now I’d learned to recognize as inspired) came into my brain that said “Go back to school.” It took me a few weeks to process this thought, argue against it—it took me out of my decades-long comfort zone of my career path—but a few months later I found myself back in college and my brain expanding in new ways that was thrilling. That’s how I discovered that I love writing, something I’d never seriously dabbled in before, but now was working on a creative writing minor, submitting pieces to publications, and finding I loved throwing myself into this new craft.
A few years into this “seeking and following the Spirit” adventure another thought came: “Go to Paris to study abroad.” Good grief, I was too old to just jaunt off to Paris. What would my poor, long-suffering husband say to that? He’d already struggled through my leaving our business, and supported me during non-stop homework, commuting an hour each way back and forth to school, and a thousand other little inconveniences, besides. But by then I’d learnt to trust that little, still, small voice, and so I kept on following it.
Seven glorious weeks living in Paris, paired with an expat woman around my own age, expanding my mind even more—plus adding a French minor to my English major—was the reward I received by following that quiet, significant voice.
I’m now done with school, but just getting started with writing. I’m still having grand, unlooked-for adventures, and intend to write about them all. Life close to retirement feels like I might never retire. Instead of tired, I feel new, invigorated, and more able to face unlooked-for adventures which that trusted little voice just keeps leading me on. Writing about them is the icing on the cake, giving me a deep satisfaction, which is hard to describe, but which I’m trying to learn how to explain more effectively through my craft of writing, in order to do so more beautifully, meaningfully, for those who read my work.
