The Outsider's Scriptorium....

While blog-hopping this morning, I noticed several people talking about why they do this. Why do so many of us get up each day, think of a topic, log on and write?

You know what? I have no definitive answer! I can't say for certain. There's no ultimate agenda, no profound message, no overriding need. It's just a way to communicate thoughts and ideas that pass through my life from a variety of sources. I'm an observer here.

It's a way to document a fairly unique experience. It's not often that someone over 50 deliberately chooses and adopts another culture, finds her soul's home and deliberately sets out to make it physical home as well. In many ways, it's like being a child again with the wisdom of an adult. I can embrace that culture while still having the guts and the brains to sort the wheat from the chaff. That's true outsider writing.

On the other hand, it reinforces my outsider status in the negative application. I am not part of a family unit. I do not travel extensively. My last bit of traveling will be a one-way ticket to Thailand. My life here is very home-centered, very idea-centered ~ certainly not much that would be considered entertaining to recreational readers. My site will never be filled with pictures of the moments of my life with kids, parents and the usual rites and passages of that style of life. It won't be filled with the things most consider cornerstone.

I am the rare woman who has been given the gift of a completely blank slate on which to create my life. It is an invigorating process but it also carries an awesome responsibility. The state of and well-being of my life falls entirely on my shoulders, a result of my choices. I have no outside source to blame or praise for it. It's all me.

That is also very unusual.

I grew up and experienced the majority of my adulthood as a completely disconnected person. I was not included in the ebb and flow of American life. I lived a life that many would have viewed as lonely ~ but it rarely felt lonely. There was so much to learn, so much to see, that boredom was never an option ~ even in the midst of the driest, most barren time in the desert. I'm certainly never bored or lonely now, even though I don't have the usual external stuff such as family or employment to occupy me.

So again, why do I do this? Perhaps it is worth documenting because most of the people I've known who come from my type of experience are ashamed. It can be a very damaging experience if we choose to process it that way. This culture shames people who don't have the external trappings that most people have: the kids, the house, the parents, the relatives, the employment and the interactive lives that flow from that. So they hide. They don't understand the freedom of choice they have in their lives. They don't understand or embrace the fact that many of us are wanderers in this life. We're observers.

This quote from Maya Angelou's I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings sums it up well:

'What you looking at me for? I didn't come to stay.' … Whether I could remember the rest of the poem or not was immaterial. The truth of the statement was like a wadded-up handkerchief, sopping wet in my fists, and the sooner they accepted it, the quicker I could let my hands open and the air would cool my palms."

I am not ashamed of my past. Not in the least. If I'd wanted those things all that badly, I would have created them. I would have done the things and made the compromises necessary to create them. I'm not some hapless victim who got a raw deal in life. I got an unusual deal, yes, but not raw.

I never wanted the kids, the house and the supposed American ideal. My last brief foray into the world of dating reinforced that. I really do.not.want.it. The whole idea of marketing human relationships makes me physically ill. Maybe I just don't have the same capacity to put up with crap as most people.

More outsider stuff.

And I'll continue writing. I'll continue to write between the lines of Thai values and the transformation my lifestyle choice has offered me. Without being bombastic, pedantic or a propagandist for Thailand, I can write of the way my life has changed so drastically and so completely as a result of discovering the culture that feeds my soul, that makes my life more rich and far more complete than I'd ever imagined was possible. Hopefully someone will find it of interest. Maybe someone out there will also see that having a free life is not a shameful thing. I love the life I've chosen. That's worth celebrating.


Peace,

~Chani