Discovering the power of blogging
Three days without internet and I missed blogging. That surprised me.
I feel I’m discovering a new space, and I’m aware that inhabiting it may change me. That thought gives me energy, because the idea of transformation excites me, especially if I can get it doing something I love.
For years I was terrified to blog. The pen name has helped more than I can say. So has a new knowing, that I am not writing alone. I have found fellow bloggers in friends, and made friends with bloggers.
Now I feel I’ve joined the club, if only in my mind. The door was always open, and I was always welcome. But the support of others, and the anonymity of a pen name has helped me feel safe enough to walk inside. And here, whether anyone reads this or not, I feel less alone.
I used to believe that writing a blog only made sense if someone read it. Now I think it makes sense for other reasons. I’m aware that I am putting words into a different type of space, and in doing so, creating something. I know that others are writing, doing the same. I know that more voices will join, too, when they discover the wonder of using this freedom to express ourselves. No more gatekeepers, no more permission needed.
Is blogging like an open mic or a piano recital? Is this why the teachers would gather their students together to put on a show? Was it always for us, rather than those watching from behind the lights? I always hated the performance, but yes, I did enjoy the time with friends behind the curtain.
Now I am feeling some sort of call, or heeding a call, though I can’t articulate it. I get excited to see the blank page, and to know that I can put words onto it. Today, tomorrow.
Perhaps there’s a freedom in it. I’m not writing for a class where a teacher will evaluate it. I’m not writing in a journal that will sit in a box. I’m not having a conversation with a friend, that will exist in two different versions, in our memories. This is different. It’s unique. I’m putting my thoughts into sentences, and sending them out into the world. Like those papers we put into balloons as kids and sent them up in the sky.
A message in a bottle.
As I think this, I am reminded that as a human, this is a new freedom, to blog. And as a woman, knowing that my words were not welcome, nor printed, nor allowed, nor heard… until relatively recently.
Freedom. What are freedoms for if we cannot live into them.
“Keep writing,” a fellow blogger wrote me recently. “You have a lot inside you that wants to get out.”
I sure do.
What’s in you that wants to get out?
