The Muse Wears a Bucket Hat
A Story I Almost Didn’t Tell
I’ve been experiencing writer’s block for the last couple of weeks. When this happens, I try to stay in motion. So, I journal daily. I circle around moments, sketch out half-ideas. I even wrote a 1,500-word, satirical essay on imposter syndrome. I scrapped it—it was too meta, clever, not quite real.
On Good Friday, my husband and I went to the beach to people-watch. It’s one of my favorite things to do, especially when I’m not distracted. We found an empty bench. I silenced my phone and pulled my notebook onto my lap like a signal to the Muse: I’m ready. The sun was hot against my black sweater, but the spring air still carried a chill. I pushed off my sweater and let the cold air brush my bare shoulders. Clouds streaked across the sky like soap suds. I wrote that down.
“Writing is more than expression—it’s a quiet understanding between who you are and who you’re still becoming. Each sentence says: Here I am. A moment, captured. And the instant I write it down, I’m already changing.”
A little girl, maybe two, wandered over—Asian, unsteady on her feet, followed by two men: her father, and who I assumed was her grandfather. She hesitated at the sight of my dog, Thor. We gently encouraged her to pet him, a ritual we’ve developed with kids. After a few tentative strokes, she lost interest. Her father thanked us and led her away.
But the older man stayed.
He wasn’t her grandfather. Just a stranger looking for someone to talk to.
Elderly, eccentric. Glasses. A bucket hat. A black hip-slung purse. I noticed his faded linen shirt—pink, blue, red stripes—thanks to the grounding exercises my therapist has me doing. (I wrote about that in my last piece: How Grounding Exercises Made Me (Slightly) Less Delusional.)
“What are you reading?” he asked, pointing to my notebook.
“I’m writing,” I said.
His face lit up like an arcade machine. “I’m looking for an editor!”
He pulled a bright blue book from his bag and handed it to me. The title stretched across two dozen words—something about a spiritual guide. I kept a straight face. My “this might get interesting” alert quietly buzzed.
My mother’s voice echoed in my head: ‘You never know when you’re entertaining an angel.’
His face struck me—uncannily like my father’s. I glanced at my husband, wondering if he saw it too. He did. Later, he’d say it before I could.
“I’m looking for someone who cares about the subject,” he said, “more than the money.”
He searched my face, trying to read my reaction.
The book was bristling with colored sticky tabs—over a hundred of them. It looked like it was wearing a shredded rainbow skirt. Inside were chapters, quotes, reflections. A personal spiritual journey.
I handed the book back and gently shifted the conversation.
“Have you ever thought about using AI to help you edit?” I asked.
His eyebrows lifted. “How would I even do that?”
“You’d need to open a tool like ChatGPT—or Deepseek. Then paste in your writing and ask it to copyedit.”
He handed the book back to me, then fished around for a pen.
“Can you write that down? —-right in there? My brain doesn’t work the same way it used to.”
I opened the front cover and scribbled a few instructions—just enough to get him started. He watched closely, nodding, like each word was a lifeline.
“That’s what writing is. It’s reliving. Re-narrating. A way to authorize your own story.”
His name was Ray. He said he had dementia. He smiled often, lips curved like a rainbow, teeth slightly yellowed. His warmth reminded me of my dad. That stirred something in me—a sadness, maybe. My dad and I are from different worlds—he, conservative, frugal, grounded in evangelical faith; me, more liberal, spiritually untethered, comfortable with abundance. Still, Ray’s presence made me remember the deep conversations my dad and I used to have about literature and faith.
Ray told me he never meant to write. But twenty years ago, something shifted. He became obsessed, writing fourteen hours a day. It poured out. My dad’s the same—always scribbling, always digging into something.
Ray talked about anxiety. How he grew up on a farm in Stony Plain, Alberta. One of nine kids. Little affection. He didn’t think his mother wanted children.
“If I kissed her, she’d wipe her face,” he said, showing me the motion of wiping a kiss of his face.
Then came the story about the well.
“The pump was broken. My father wanted me to fix it. I was nine.”
I pictured my nephew, who recently turned nine, being lowered into a well.
“They strapped me in with a rope and lowered me down. I found the pump. Water was spraying everywhere. I reached for the switch. Suddenly, electricity shot through me. My uncle pulled me up. I must’ve passed out. I don’t remember it.”
His voice softened. “I never realized how traumatized I was.”
His story brought something back. I was thirteen, at a sleepover in a country house in the Yukon. Three girls. Parents away in Arizona. Too many coolers. One friend stayed up and got confused in the dark. She wandered into the basement and fell into a hidden well. We didn’t hear her screams. We found her the next morning—covered in sawdust and mud, pants soaked and discarded, eyes feral. We laughed about it for years. But later, we both wrote about it. Because beneath the comedy, it was terrifying.
“Of course that would’ve been terrifying for a nine-year-old,” Ray said, as if hearing my thoughts.
He found a therapist and began to understand how deep it went. He believed he had to relive the trauma to heal. That made me think of ‘Age Regression’—a technique in hypnotherapy I was trained in. Clients return to their earliest trauma to re-narrate the event.
That’s what writing is. It’s reliving. Re-narrating. A way to authorize your own story.
Verlyn Klinkenborg, author of “Several Short Sentences About Writing” wrote:
“Being a writer is a continual process of self-authorization. No one else can authorize you. No one. This doesn’t happen overnight.”
Those words stay with me.
Writing is more than expression—it’s a quiet understanding between who you are and who you’re still becoming. Each sentence says: Here I am. A moment, captured. And the instant I write it down, I’m already changing.
It’s not about being understood. It’s about witnessing myself—then letting it go.
Can I drop the mask and be seen?
How close can I get to that raw center?
Ray said he’d gone to the Philippines, hoping to make peace with his past. I meant to ask why there, but I forgot.
He found a well. Sat beside it. Imagined himself—a boy, terrified, at the edge. He grieved: for the fear, and for the feeling of not being wanted by his parents.
That night, back in his room, he wrote everything down. As he did, he felt a surge—like electricity, like lightning. It knocked him to the floor. He came to with a ripping sensation in his skull. It scared him. An aneurysm, maybe? He couldn’t be sure. But something shifted. His sleep apnea eased. His anxiety quieted.
He believed it was Kundalini—an ancient concept from Indian spiritual traditions. Dormant energy at the base of the spine is said to awaken and rise, leading to intense spiritual or physical transformation.
“Have you heard of Kundalini?” he asked.
Funny enough, I had.
“I’ve experienced it,” I told him. “Years ago, a Kundalini yoga teacher on Granville Island guided me through breathwork. She made me comfortable, lying down. Placed her hands beneath my head and told me to breathe. At first—nothing. Then a pulse, head to toe. I ugly cried. Something left my body.”
He slid closer on the bench.
And told me again: he never chose writing. It chose him. And now it won’t stop.
Me too.
I keep asking: Am I delusional to think this writing matters? To put words on a page and share them? Who cares? Who am I to write with so much 'I'? But I can’t stop. I’ve kept a journal since 1993.
So if I’m going to write, I might as well keep getting better. How does someone become a better writer?
“Start by learning to recognize what interests you. Most people have been taught that what they notice doesn’t matter.” - Klinkenborg
Ray interested me. So I noticed.
Before we left, he handed me a business card.
It read: Soul Man.
“You can email me,” he said, “but you probably won’t.”
I wondered if I would.
Question for the comments:
How do you authorize yourself to be who you are? What small steps do you take every day to claim your voice? What’s a story you’ve avoided telling? Why? What might happen if you finally told it?
Thanks for reading friends,
Ashley aka Fake Guru
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💬 Let’s Talk (Live!): Exciting announcement:
On Thursday, May 1 at 1PM PST, I’m hosting my first-ever Substack Live conversation with my brilliant friend
author, new Substacker, and recently turned literary agent.We’ll be talking about writing, creativity, voice, rejection, reinvention, and why it’s so hard to say what we really mean sometimes. (Whether you’re a writer or not—you’ve probably felt that.) We’re also going to talk about writing for Substack and strategy!
🌀 Come for the insight, stay for the honesty. It’s free, it’s live, and it might just leave you feeling a little more clear, brave, or seen.
