I’ve been reading some Anne Lamott. If you haven’t read any of her books, you really need to. She is just fantastic. Her prose jumps right off the page and paints the most beautiful images for the mind and the stories she tells make me laugh and give me shivers and make me want to take the time to write my own.
I used to love writing, back in the olden days when I was an angst-ridden teen, wallowing in her basement bedroom, pining for the affections of the uninterested. I would pour my soul out into my journal, chronicling the tedious teenaged drama, the huge emotions surging through my fresh, raw, little heart and the dreams I harboured in the same.
Then I got married and stopped writing. It felt odd to keep a journal when I had a husband to pour my thoughts and ideas out to. And he was great, of course. He listened, he cared, he was my living, breathing notebook. But after a few years, I missed the act of writing, the way it captured moments to let you live them again when you stumbled on embarrassing entries from years gone by. This was right around the time I discovered blogging and I jumped in headfirst. I wrote, and I wrote and I wrote. I wrote almost every day. And I found my voice again, and became more confident in my ability to create with words and it was just what I needed, especially as I found myself at home with three babies biting my ankles (and my nipples).
Then blogging changed for me. It changed for everyone. It became a little less about sharing thoughts and stories and more about image and self-promotion and product placement and I found myself shrinking back from the online world and trying to focus more on real life, especially as I started a new career and the daily demands of juggling life with three kids, a husband who has two jobs, yada, yada, busy, busy…. left little time for blogging. That being said, I found myself missing making the time to write again.
They say you do what you love. You make time for the things that matter most to you.
I have been picking up my camera more, and that is often a starting point for me in the creative process: taking a photograph, sharing it and writing some words to frame it.
I don’t know where I’m going with this, writing about writing. I do want to write more and get better and keep on finding my words and pressing them to paper before they evaporate.
Anyways, thanks for reading, whoever’s out there. It means a lot to know you’re still here, checking in every now and again.
Blogging brought out my love of writing that I had from a very young age but never cultivated in university. It also got me through the early days of baby #2 – and I found new “friends” and sense of community that I really needed as a SAHM for the very first time in my life. To have actually met some of them IRL not so many years ago was really great – I never would have imagined that simply logging into my computer and sharing my innermost thoughts with my screen – would bring me this sense of belonging.
But yeah, I left the blogging fulltime just before it became so commercial and all about trying to make some extra cash.
Now that I’m back into a very busy career, I only post occasionally – sporadically, really- but I often long for the days that I would put the baby down for a nap; get a coffee; and write and write – passionate posts, knowing that there were friend/kindred spirits out there who could relate. I still have one hundred million thoughts that I wish I had time to capture. If only I had the time.
Thanks for sharing – please do keep up with what you love. Be true to yourself.
You don’t know me, but I check in daily. I’m glad you’re still writing.
Well said!
I love all that’s happening in this picture. I agree with you on where some blogging is going. I find myself a bit out of touch at blogging events as I’m not in it for the promo or product. I truly find it an outlet to just get crap out of my mind and onto paper and it’s been amazing. I didn’t write in high school – I never realized how much I loved it until my first blog started eight or so years ago. Hope you will write more – I love reading.
Funny that you bring it up, as I was sitting drinking my coffee this morning I was thinking about writing as well. I miss journalling. I have had little interest in public writing lately (hence the languishing blog), but I do feel the desire to record and create. I have gotten away from doing it for my own sake.
I always say I write to relieve the excess noise in my head and it’s true. Sometimes I write because I’ve committed to, sometimes because I feel like I need to and other times because I simply can. I think that’s my favourite part about blogging, there are times I can’t talk, there are times I have to be quiet or keep my opinion to myself but online, on my blog it’s my space, my time, my voice. Nobody can make me stop, nobody “sshh’s” me and if a reader doesn’t like it they can comment or go. It’s the perfect thing for “she who has verbal diarrhea”.
Hence the length of the comment and ps I’m always here reading