I’ve been rereading posts from the blog I wrote in from 2012-2021, when I spelled my pen name Sulyn Zan. I started this blog primarily to help myself get over being shy or insecure about my writing; it’s actually strange to me now how seriously I took that part of myself before this period of time began. It’s as if my writing and my voice somehow represented my entire self-worth, and I was terrified that if I shared these with people, I might be proven insubstantial or incapable. Therefore, I never shared any of the writing that I considered to be a *real* effort at writing in this blog, except perhaps my literary analysis. I felt it more expedient to accept my more spontaneous voice, and to test whether or not that in itself had value. It worked, as this was the voice I used to hobnob with Stephen Colbert’s writing team and a number of other people in film/TV/politics/books/music/journalism and other fields, on Twitter. Today I have no fear of famous, well-established people, of what they think of me. I can be dull or simplistic if I want to be because I have already proven to myself and others that I am not (not usually, or at least not always!) My flaws retain the portion of me justly allotted, and that is that. The flip side is that some of the writing done in this voice may be more appealing than that which I’ve done as a “concerted” effort in private. But I’m still excited to submit more of my formal writing to literary magazines soon…
Incidentally, the very final blog – the one that comes up as soon as you click on this link – is very off-the-cuff and not my best writing. The first of the “Breakfast Guy” blogs, however, is a better effort, not least of all because I was so inspired when first arriving in Athens.
