One of those mornings where I woke at sunrise. This has happened now twice in the last week. It’s like the sun has something to say to me. And this is not like my normal self. My normal self normally likes the winter, the gray, the darkness or late night (I am the woman who wrote her master’s thesis about the Greek goddess Persephone – Queen of the Underworld). The gloomier days have been when I have felt most connected to my soulful and deepest parts. I have not seen myself as a Sun worshipper too often. But, part of the reason I awoke this morning was my literary agent popped into my head. I thought, “I’ve been blogging, I should let her know. Maybe she’ll like what I’ve been writing.” And boom suddenly there was an evaporation of myself, and in came marching in my strategic mind with all his cronies, wanting to suss (sp?) out every option and opportunity I may have to become famous. I picture them with their cigars, jackets off, rolled up sleeves and suspenders, like some kind of Wall Street bankers, looking for ways to carve up the world some more for their private use and profit.

And this is why I have been ignoring my literary agent for a while. It is not personal. She’s actually smart, fun, generous, and a huge fan of mine. It just seems that I have made her into someone who serves my greediness, and therefore I must please to the ends of this earth. Because if I don’t I will die alone, penniless and undistinguished. And so dipping into my creative self under those conditions is not very fruitful. When I create that kind of situation, I creatively run dry, which is what I would not hope to be around her, since she is the one who might be able to help me actually share my work with the world. So in order to find my creativity, my voice, my fertility, I have not spoken with her for a few months.

When she first met me, she was my dream come true. She saw me at a spoken word event and loved my work. She really got me, heard me, and did I mention that she loved me. I see now how this was the hook for me. I have been known to have the Desperately Seeking Love and Approval radar on most of the time, and here she was, not only loving and approving of me, but a road to the fame that had alluded me for so long! She was perfect. Yes, perfect for the those parts of me that were running on empty, trying to get every last inch out of my childish, archaic needs to desperately mean something and matter to the world. For about a year and a half I strung myself along with fantasies of writing my memoir (this will be done, I swear), and then a book where I would save the world by sharing all my wisdom and insights about what is so wrong with it all. But because it was all rooted in this “Love me, Need me” place, none of it got off the ground. Funny how that works, huh? It is all there: the subject matter, the pieces of my life, the stories, and I suppose my talent, but my heart wasn’t’ in it.

Here’s another thing about all of this that came to me this morning: this is not the universe’s fault – this “when will I be famous and significant” shit. It is mine. I have been blaming many things on why I have not written my book yet, why no one in the world knows who I am or what I am about. Of course, my mother and father come into that picture often, and then lately I have added God to that list. But I now see that my invisibility has been my choice. All along I really believed that I wanted fame, attention and recognition. But I see now that has not been the case. I have chosen oblivion, silence and invisibility by not taking certain steps, by staying small when I could step up and be bigger, by staying quiet when I could have been loud. I have been afraid to speak up and speak out. I have made myself insignificant. Not my literary agent, not my parents, not God. And a part of me is happy about that. Have you seen the shit that Paris Hilton has to put up with?

I don’t have anything brilliant to conclude here. This revelation is new and I feel that I must sit with it. You know, work it like a loose tooth until it frees itself and I can spit it out and put it under my pillow. And then, maybe finally then, I will be able to transform it into a shiny new coin that I can take out into the world and exchange it for something that I really want.