Overexposure
I submit a creative essay to my favorite writing community. I receive no answer.
I try again. Same response. No response.
I press out of my comfort zone and offer my writing in an upcoming collaboration. But all the spots are taken.
When I was little, I was eager to talk and share my stories. Overeager, in fact, until I realized nobody was listening because there were so many other voices, stronger voices, better voices wanting to be heard.
So I stopped talking, stopped weaving stories … except in my head.
Then I discovered writing but so did several million others and so did AI and so did people who got their degrees in marketing or business so they know how to put themselves out there even if they do not resonate with writing as a calling, as the truest part of them.
There are still many other voices, louder voices, stronger voices sounding. Better at being heard.
If words today were light, this world is overexposed. There is altogether too much of it all.
Usually, when there's competition or a crowd, I back off. I give up. I turn away. Prefer to let others brave the crowds and win the day.
But I cannot turn away from this, for writing is not just what I do but who I am.
And so, I continue …
But it feels sometimes just like noise, like a single drop in a bucket, diluted, unnoticed, unneeded, unwanted.
Wondering if things will ever change or if I will forever arrive too late, with too little in my hands, and nothing to offer but these words on a page.
Can this ordinary life, these ordinary words, be enough to lighten someone’s day when there is so much already out there, so many words being said, so many stories being told?
Can I find just enough light to cast some sort of prism when the word is already overexposed?
Can I yet limn these words?