Nearly three years ago I started blogging. I’m not done, but I feel differently about it, by far, than I did the day I first typed a sentence into the little window on MySpace.
Back then I wanted exposure as a writer. Maybe as a person, too. I don’t suppose I minded the thought of finding friends, old or new, on the Internet. Mainly, I’ve always gotten jazzed by the idea of people reading my words.
Ten years ago, a lady from Florida called me after reading my Runner’s World essay about jogging with my dog. She’d related to my description of my pup’s unfettered joy on the trail and simply wanted to connect, to tell me about her doggies. Other RW readers sent in comments that the magazine printed. The buzz from that experience stayed with me – I hoped blogging would bring it again and often (and, I should add, instantly after I pressed the Publish button).
Well…Blogging has rarely provided that kind of fun. For a long time I felt very off-kilter and ambivalent about it. Now I can articulate the unsettledness: I was learning that words, paragraphs, and even essays don’t automatically translate into meaningful for anyone but me. No matter what the medium of delivery, my words, anyway, are not by themselves golden or sought-after. Duh.
The better way for my writing to strike a chord somewhere will continue to be when I can serve in some collaborative effort. I’m so grateful, as a direct result of blogging, to have found Relief Journal. And now this year blogging led me to the Internet Writing Workshop. Have I mentioned the group is fantastic? It bears repeating. Besides providing serious feedback, the IWW email list hums with ideas, questions, and possibilities for writers. Whereas six months ago I wondered if I might scrape the bottom of my idea barrel sometime soon, today I can’t keep up with possibilities simmering in this authorly brain.
I’m still seeking places, projects, and endeavors where my words can serve a purpose and become relateable. Whether I find more of them or not, I’m doing my homework, enjoying this space in life between the children’s graduations and grandkids, or parents needing me, or whatever might present itself tomorrow.
hey,
this is sort of related to this post, but mostly related to our emails – mike s in maine sends me quotes. i don’t know if you get them too, but this one was so fitting:
“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; truth isn’t.”
~Voltaire
Hi, Deanna!
I love your musings, and you know I love writers writing about writing–why DO we do it? And in what form?
I’m only in my 2nd year of blogging, so I’m not fatigued with it, or not usually, but I do go through down times when it feels stupid and worthless–I’ve been off-kilter with it, as you say.
I remember an old blogging pal told me that at those times one should just post New York Times links!
(He’s blogged every day for years, and I think he sees is as something like a spiritual practice–something you do no matter how you feel.)
Do I recognize that desire you write about for instant and frequent feedback on my posts! And, maybe especially for deep engagement. I feel deflated sometimes when it doesn’t come on a regular basis. But since it doesn’t, oddly enough, blogging is helping me cut loose, withdraw from needing it like a drug–probably what you mean by saying you learned your words weren’t sought-after gold.
I think written words are more like mud, which we use to build some humble vessel or dwelling.
So we, I, keep going on faith. Faith that … well here, I found this quote on the blog “Thinkery”:
“You have a duty and an obligation to write, not because you have ‘the truth’ and must share it with others, but because we need to discover truths and we need all the help we can get, yours included. You write because you have an obligation to do so (123).”
– James E. Porter, “Audience and Rhetoric: An Archaeological Composition of the Discourse Community” Prentice Hall, 1992.
As you point out, the question maybe isn’t whether to write, but where to put it, where do these mud bricks serve best? It’s great you’ve found a couple excellent places.
I so enjoy your blog, I hope you do keep it up, but the writer needs to find the right audience, or they to find her, which happens, eventually …if everybody’s lucky.
Just yesterday I got an e-mail out of the blue from a friend of a friend, whom I don’t know–I’m glad I didn’t delete it as spam! She wrote to say that she’s an avid reader of my blog but never comments so was writing to let me know my blog has made her laugh by day and brought comfort at night when she feels “bumps and lumps.”
This message was like the voice of god saying, Keep working that mud!
In whatever form, whatever place, you find to work and that works for you.
I hope and trust that in some way, telling our stories is one way of meeting–trying to meet–the mandate Jesus gave on at the meal we who follow the Western Christian calendar celebrate today, Maundy Thursday, some couple thousand years ago:
Love one another.
[Hmm...maybe I should post this on my own blog today! But I wrote it for/to you, Deanna. Your blog friendship has been one of the good connections that have come from blogging for me.
Can't stop the Serenity!]
Right, Angela (yes, I get Mike’s emails). I like how Voltaire puts it: “obliged” to the possibilities. Whereas nonfiction is freed, maybe, by the truth (or fashioned by it). Is that what you were thinking? I’ve pondered this, and continued to after hearing your thoughts last week (or whenever that was…).
Fresca, such a cool essay for me! Thank you. I like the image of mud bricks, and yes, this whole blogging process is a lesson in seeing reality and my place in it a bit better. What do humans do when given such a fast, yet limited medium for interaction. I like the reminder (never can hear it too often) of utilizing it in the task of loving one another.
I’m playing my flute tonight, by the way, at a Maundy Thursday service where they’re incorporating an abbreviated Seder meal, and I think that’ll be quite interesting.