Well Known or Known Well
This thought has been drifting through my mind since Christmas Eve when my sister’s apartment flooded and we stayed up til 3:00 am on my couch drinking bottles of champagne because that’s what you do when shitty things happen. You stay up and talk about it, you fill up your cup until there’s nothing left to fill it with, and as you pour in the drinks, you pour out your heart. That’s how we do it, anyway.
The thought is this: I’m not half as interested in being well known as I am in being known well. It’s one of those thoughts that comes when you can see the love clearly on the other side of the couch in the form of a person you know will be there all the way up until the funeral. For me, a person with all kinds of attachment trepidations, having a sister like this means more than I can adequately express. Usually, I let the champagne talk when it’s time to remind her of this.
Being known well is the gift of a lifetime. Somebody who knows you well can anticipate the movies you’ll shed a tear over, they know what kind of whiskey to serve at your funeral, they know your struggles and sit with you through them, and even if they don’t understand your ghost project, they do their best to listen and ask questions when they get lost in your stream-of-consciousness explanations (that one is me, but you get what I’m saying). Being known well is the freedom to be yourself in all your forms all at once.
Being well known is something completely different. It has never really been my aim. It may well happen as I continue writing, but it’s not some master plot of mine. Sure, I want my novel to be in the hands of those who need it, who will resonate with it, and of course I want to make contributions to both the scholarly and adoption communities as I work my way through this head of mine with my writing. But those gifts don’t require sharing ALL of myself. Or they shouldn’t.
One of the main reasons I think this thought really stuck around with me after that night we stayed up having cosmic discussions was because of my relationship with social media. I’d already let people know in November that I’d be making an exit from Facebook and Twitter. The people who were interested in my work would find me, I reasoned, and the rest would filter out.
Facebook has always felt like a zoo enclosure to me, but not one of those nice ones with the good diets and enrichment. More like one of those cages with a chain link fence, concrete floors, and no escape from the people gawking. Speaking about adoption’s impact on my life has been difficult, and there are times when perhaps I’ve said too much, aired out a rug in public that I should have just beat in the backyard. It’s not that I regret anything that’s out there in the world, it’s just that now is the time for me to have a little peace. That’s what is supposed to come after the storm, right?
And Twitter is just a mess. I enjoyed my time there, but it was just another thing to invade my brain. If the true gift that I give is writing, I should arrange my brain in a way that leaves space for that. And again, I’m not really gone.
It just takes a quick Google search to see what I’m up to. It’s not like I’m disappearing off the face of the earth. It’s just that I would rather be looked up for my ideas rather than watched like a reality tv show. It isn’t my quest to be famous, after all. I actually prefer that the people I interact with have a shared interest with me, that they make a smidge of the effort to figure out how to talk with me about these things. But, of course, having a sturdy pile of strong friendships and seeing one of them sitting on my couch on Christmas Eve helped solidify the other side of it for me. There’s being well known for the good ideas you toss out into the universe, but you don’t owe God and everybody the rest of yourself. There are things that are just for your close friends and family who get the privilege of knowing you well.
I’ve gotten a little pushback from a few people who view me as aloof or perceive me to be intellectualizing my feelings instead of feeling them, especially as it pertains to my adoptee story, but there are some details that are just for me. That’s okay. There are some feelings that I feel all by myself, and that’s okay. What I give to the public is a gift.
So maybe I’m not on Facebook or Twitter, but I’m still on Instagram and LinkedIn. And you can contact me through my website. I’m not so interested in being well known, but I know that if you’re here reading this right now, you’re on your way to knowing me well.
