I haven't done a Jane update in a while. I keep itching to but I feel like I have to step back and tell you the whole thing. These half-truths corrode me.
First of all, I made the big mistake of telling my therapist about Jane. When you put something like that into words, you lose it. You not only lose it but throw it down onto concrete and jump on it several times when you tell this to someone who does not get it at all.
There is an art to being a therapist, surely, but there is also got to be an art to going to a therapist and seeking healing without misrepresenting the deep and important concepts within and feeling all unclean afterward.
Despite the disappointment I had over telling him about Jane and him not getting it and putting me cringing in my seat for forty five minutes over his total ignorance of women's studies, Jane will not be put down.
Jane holds up to this, and still needs to be discussed.
So that was one thing I needed to tell you.
The other thing is that I am doing this because I am inspired by other journals. Some people make a character or an alter-ego and post artfully in this fashion. I am sort of doing the inverse, because I am showing all the wires and cables, and you're seeing me crouching in front of the machine, connecting this one to that one, to see what works. This is all the unpleasant stuff that does not make for an Artful Blog. The way other people do it, is to make the character, then the blog. That is the way it is supposed to be done.
I can't do things the right way. I am wrong in the head, unfortunately. For me it is about the journey, and explaining Jane is the activity, defining Jane is the ongoing challenge. The reason I am doing it is because somehow I have a lot to say about this, and it seems to be the right thing for me to do.
Jane has come to me as a character to be expressed, like other characters in the past. Almost all of the time my medium of expression is my stories. Occasionally it may be poetry or photography, and even a couple of times it was my needlework. I know when I have found the right tool of expression when I look at what I have made and it and my character are the same.
However I express Jane through aspects of my life and through my appearance and even words that I say. It may seem that I am scripted and false, but when I express Jane, I experience the fulfillment as I do when writing on a character, and it seems right.
I guess what I have realized is that my need to express Jane comes as a different, more experimental way of being a writer and creator than forging an identity for myself, which is what I was discussing with my therapist.