I started this blog in late 2018, about three and a half years ago, because I wanted (needed) a creative outlet. I also wanted (needed) to explore the feelings and thoughts that had been rolling around in my heart and my head for years.
I’d also been telling myself I should start a blog seemingly forever, and then one day over Thanksgiving break I finally ripped the band-aid off. I set up a Squarespace account, found a blog template I liked, and published my first post a few days later on December 1, 2018. It was exhilarating at the time and it still is.
This is my 46th post. It blows my mind how much I’ve been able to learn about myself and the world around me in the 45 I’ve already written.
When I sit down and write these days my goal is to be honest with myself and express truth. It could be the truth of what I’m feeling, the truth of a moment or memory from the past, or the truth of an idea that for some reason resonates with me. Writing forces me to think hard about that truth and document what it really is, both the simplicity and complexity of it. I’ve spent too much time in my life trying to be clever or witty and it’s never worked for me. Now I just go for truth.
I’ve gotten so much better at writing over the past few years. I’ve done this mostly by going deeper and then deeper still into my thoughts and feelings and recollections to get to the heart of whatever it is I’m writing about. Then I just find the right words to describe it. But that’s not all. Good writing needs to be engaging and authentic. It needs to have a voice. I’m finding my voice too.
One interesting thing about truth and my quest to put it into words is that as I’ve gotten older I’ve found it harder and harder to find anything that’s perfectly true in a black and white kind of way. What this means is that writing truth requires me to be super clear about what I don’t know and what I don’t understand, which trust me is almost everything.
This blog has become one of the most important personal projects of my life. Some of the writing brings me joy, especially when a post is done and says what I want it to say. Capturing the essence of a profound feeling or a beautiful moment from the past can bring happy tears to my eyes.
Other posts can be painful and complicated to write, making me feel unsettled or lost or ashamed. Writing is definitely not joyous in these moments, but finding the truth, or at least seeking it, brings meaning and also some satisfaction. As scary as the truth can be, it also comforts me when I’m not hiding from it.
I’ve written some things on this blog that have made me feel totally exposed and vulnerable. That’s what tends to happen when I explore my mistakes and regrets, or when I write about trauma. When I publish a post like this part of me dreads people I know coming across it and learning about this aspect of who I am inside. It can also be difficult and uncomfortable for me to better understand this stuff.
But here’s the thing: nothing bad ever happened after I published a post, and pretty much every comment I’ve received has been positive and supportive. Some of these posts have also opened the door to great conversations with people I love about things they’d never felt comfortable talking about before.
I’ve come to understand that I have a deep need to explore my thoughts and feelings. When I do this through writing (or any form of self expression) I feel more connected to life itself. I feel meaning and purpose. When I don’t take time to do this on a regular basis I feel lost and disconnected.
Expressing myself and my truth is so important. I need to do it, for my sanity and also to satisfy the intense creative urges that have always flowed through me. This blog gives me the opportunity and platform for this and I’m so grateful for it.
I also made some changes to my blog this month that I’d like to share.
Up until now, I kept the design and structure of this website the same as it was when I started it. Except for adding a new post every month, the look and feel of the site did not change. This month I decided to move a few things around so I’m going to explain these changes and what I hope to accomplish with them.
The big one is that I added a new home page. Instead of visitors going directly to my blog when they visit the site, they now arrive at a home page where I provide a brief welcome and explain what readers can expect to find here, which is posts written by me about things that interest me. There’s no central theme running through the posts or a primary subject. Rather, it’s just me and my interests that take center stage.
On the home page I also added several featured posts, which I consider to be my “best of” material. I added the featured posts because over time I’ve written enough on this blog that you need to dig for a while to get to the old stuff. So I’m just bringing my favorites up front with the hope that people might start engaging with this site by reading the featured posts and then can keep exploring from there if they’re still interested.
It was also clear to me that I didn’t want my latest post to define my blog for first time visitors. This blog is about the sum total of everything written here, not any one thing, so I didn’t want the most recent post to be the first thing people saw when they came here with no context. That being said, I did put my latest post about midway down the new home page right after the welcome so that folks can go right to it if they’re a regular visitor or just want to read my most recent writing.
So those are the changes I made. One of these days I want to take it further by freely sharing my posts via email to those that have signed up for my newsletter (I still haven’t sent a single newsletter in the past three plus years - sorry subscribers!) and perhaps through social media too. But for now I’m taking these small steps forward and will see what happens.
I’m excited to keep publishing posts every month and I hope this project continues to be such a positive force in my life. Thank you all for reading. I truly appreciate your interest, support and encouragement.