Yesterday, a young friend of mine told me that he was considering starting a blog. He asked me for advice, then made his question more specific with “what do you wish you had known when you started that you know now?”
I always struggle with a question like that. I feel that I gain so much from the trial and error, the discovery, the mistakes that lead to eventual success. Without the things I learned along the way, there would have been no growth, no adventure.
Sure I have made lots of mistakes when it came to my blogging, and I have done some things right (in my opinion anyway) from day one.
My first mistake was why I ever started blogging. I wanted to keep my friends included in what was happening to me when I went back to college nine years ago. I figured I wouldn’t have as much time to spend with them, so this was my attempt to share my experiences. Little did I know that most of them would not read the blog with any regularity (if at all!) but the younger folks I was in class with would be all about what I had to say about them and what we were experiencing together. My different perspective on what we were going through seemed to matter to them.
By the end of my first year back at school I changed my focus from “here’s what happened today, my old friends” to “here is the lesson I learned at my age from being around these young folks and this campus.”
It was what the focus should have been all along.
As time has gone on and I have graduated, once again my focus had to change. At first I thought it would be all about my theatre experiences, but I almost feel like the cast of a show is a small, temporary circle of trust. I feel that we have to be free to experiment and be creative during the process without being afraid of someone waiting to write about it all. After the process is over, then I guess I could recount the experience, but by then it is over and you move on.
I was asked if I got more joy from the actual act of writing or in hearing from people who had read what I wrote and shared what they took away from having done so.
I told my young friend that mostly I just felt compelled to write. I get ideas while laying in bed or while taking a shower. I have something happen that triggers a thought or I experience something that makes me think, makes me change perspectives.
I told him that if asked each day to write a story about my breakfast that day- the experience of cooking it, eating it, whatever, I could do it and would do so happily. I am never so content as when I sit at my computer and write. About anything.
Knowing that someone actually read what I wrote is wonderful, don’t get me wrong. Seeing the count of page-reads each day is something I find astonishing. When I get stopped at church or get a comment on Facebook that what I wrote made an impact, it is very meaningful to me. It is ALWAYS baffling, but very meaningful.
That being said, I think I would be compelled to write even if no one ever saw it. I have written about 50,000 words on a book that I have to go back and flesh out and edit. I doubt I will ever let anyone read it. It became something I had not expected and I am not sure I want to ever have anyone else see it.
That was the last thing I told the young man asking me about blogging. I used to get an idea, type in the title and then begin to write. Usually what I end up with is not at all what I started with. I almost always had to go back and change the title. Now I write, then decide on a title. I let the words and the story take me wherever it wants without a title to conform to. Than I let the words I’ve written give me a title.
I recently saw a movie entitled “Where’d You Go, Bernadette?” Cate Blanchett plays an ex-award winning architect who gives it all up to be a stay at home mom. She seeems to be losing her mind, but *spoiler alert* she is just stifled. When I get busy and don’t write, I feel tense and a little nuts. I feel unfulfilled and actually, quite useless! I really related to that movie. The need to be creative in any way that works for you, singing, painting, writing, can make you feel like you might explode if you don’t get it out.
Writing, whether anyone reads it or not, brings me peace, it lets me be real and although I am very careful to not mention names and stay somewhat vague, often my stories are pretty straight forward. It gives me a feeling of accomplishment, even if the things I write are basically useless or silly. For that day I needed to be useless or silly.
When someone sends my blog to a friend or retweets it to their followers, I feel honored. When I am told that my blog was quoted by someone, or that someone got something from it, I am speechless. I don’t understand, I don’t feel like it was anything to be lauded for. I feel that I write as I breathe. I see things happen around me (inhale) and I put them down on paper (exhale.) I don’t see it as something to celebrate any more than you would stop to tell me that I did a good job breathing today.
The gratitude I feel whenever I receive feedback is again more than I know how to respond to. Keep telling me, just forgive me when I look at you quizzically and have no idea what to say. Except thank you. In life as in prayer, thank you is usually the correct response.
So my young friend, blog. If you feel the urge to write it down, write. If you wait for recognition or write what you think someone else wants to read, you will be unfulfilled and sadly disappointed. I have an anonymous quote in my office that says, “So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters. And whether it matters for ages or only for hours, who can say.”
I guess the one thing I have learned that I wish I knew all along was to write what I want. Don’t let others censor you or shame you or influence you away from what you feel to be right and true for you. That is pretty much advice for across the board- be honest and authentic.
So yes, start a blog, start a journal, start a book, start a story. If you feel compelled to write, write. If you feel compelled to share, share. If not, don’t. No one may care, no one may get it, and that is OK. You are writing from and for your heart, your soul, and your spirit. If you feel pulled to write, maybe it is God tugging at you. If it is a chore, then stop. But if it makes you feel free, makes you feel complete, makes you feel fulfilled, don’t give it any more contemplation, just write about it.
