Arrgh - how do you define a style that says "Tess"?

I could not believe how hard it was to sit down and find designs and styles and colors that would help define me and help me stand out.  I need to brand myself - so says the books, the experts, and my publisher.

What happens when I can't define a style on the outside that defines who I am on the inside?  I can tell you that it makes me crazy wondering what I'm going to present to the world. Don't I  already make those decisions every day when I walk out the door or write something that will be read by others anyway?

It really shouldn't be such a hard decision: colors, templates, and a design to represent me. It was.

But when I stumbled upon a background with Buddha, only half his face in quiet repose, I realized that this was who I was on the inside.  At least that is who I try to remember, along with my Christian faith. Buddha has the words that help me calm and center myself in order to find my way.

So, as a writer, I'll always go back to the inner me. I'll tell you upfront that it doesn't mean I write in one medium or genre.  I like to try new things, stretch myself, take on something I've never thought of or tried.  Part of this comes from hating to be defined, and part of that comes from the desire to model courage and vulnerability to my writing students.

I am completely cognizant of the blessing of living right here and now where I can publish to the Internet, have access to great education and mentors, send work into publishers of my choosing, and see my words in places that writers in generations before me never dreamed. I've already had something I wrote in a moment of passion on a discussion board become one of those inspirational emails that gets passed around for years, luckily it was a good post.  I can't find the original post, but the email that I saw recently, 10 years after the original, was pretty close. (I'll write more on that another day...it's worthy of an entire post on its own.)

When I get into a whirlwind of chaos trying to fly in new directions, I'll come back to the picture here of Buddha to calm my feathers, settle down, and aim at the horizon again.