Dr. Spielvogel, in the fall of 1995, I decided I needed to publish a book. And then in July of 1997, I developed my first website. I went after these goals with complete intensity. I gave my life up for them. I will never have that single-minded intensity again. I built and sold and built and sold my blogging kingdom. In the words of Alison Armstrong, I moved from a prince to a king. I am more sure about who I am now.
What becomes of me if I decide I don’t want to blog anymore? I can’t see that ever happening. Not that cleanly. I’ve been blogging less since January 2009 when I started studying to become a teacher of Alexander Technique.
We have room for only so many professional identities before they get muddied up.
I was talking to a bloke the other day who was an Alexander Technique teacher, but who made his living as a massage therapist. His clients saw him as a massage therapist, not an Alexander Technique teacher, and he’s had a difficult time getting Alexander students.
I don’t think of you, Dr. Spielvogel, as anything but my psychiatrist. I don’t think of you as a son or a brother or a lover. We don’t have enough room in our brains to give most people in our lives more than one identity.
My identity as a blogger has steadily diminished over the past 21 months as my concentration, time and energy has gone instead to learning how to teach Alexander Technique.
My blogging is now largely in harmony with my Orthodox community. I’m not blogging about p*** anymore, so my blogging is not as viscerally compelling to me and to my readers.
There are a lot of highs and lows in blogging. When I broke a big story, I felt important. Grandiose. I walked around muttering to myself, “There’s a new sheriff in town and his name is Luke Ford.”
There were also crashing lows as I dealt with the isolation that comes from offending so many people.
Alexander Technique does not come with these crashing lows. You feel great as you develop your competency and you carry this newfound ease and poise into every new day. The great feelings may go away but the good use remains. There’s no grandiosity. There’s just tranquility.
Even when I do good as a blogger, people are getting hurt. When I break an important story, there are usually winners and losers and the losers have an incentive to hurt you. There are no losers when you teach someone Alexander Technique.
Failing to make a living as a writer, I have reinvented myself as an Alexandroid. As I make more of my income from Alexander than blogging, I will become more of an Alexandroid than a blogger.
I remember how I often walked around thinking about how powerful my hands were. I could create worlds with my writing. Now I walk around thinking about how powerful my hands are because I can use them to help people with their use. I have warm hands. They are well-suited to working hands-on. When I touch people, they feel like they are slipping into a warm bath.
I like immediate benefits. I’m not someone who can work years without a return. I can make immediate changes with people with my hands.
As a blogger, I’d hunch and collapse in as I felt like the world was beating up on me. As an Alexander Technique teacher, I only do good. There’s no downside. Nobody gets mad.
