the double-edged fear of writing

Summer has drawn to an end and I find myself no more familiar with my blog than I was at the beginning of summer, 4 months ago. I read a book by beautiful author and friend, Jo Kadlecek this summer and something she wrote really stuck out to me:

"I have come to believe that writing is double-edged fear: You fear having your words, your thoughts, and your stories read, but you fear more that they will never be read at all."

Those words are so descriptive of my approach to writing. Half the time I don't stop to write my stories, musings, ect. because I think, "no one reads it anyway" and the other half of the time I don't because I'm afraid someone actually will read it.

Too many things in my life are run by fear. I don't watch certain movies because I'm afraid I'll have weird, disturbing dreams. I drive the speed limit because I'm afraid I'll get a ticket. I workout because I'm afraid I eat too much junk...and the list goes on and on. Obviously not all those fears are bad things, but, overwhelmed by them all, I find myself unwilling to give in to some of them.

And so here I am, back to blogging, making another attempt at putting together meaningful sentences, though no one may ever read them, because though I live under the weight of the double-edged fear of writing, I refuse to let it completely overtake me.

my blog manifesto

My first full year of grad school has come to a close and I'm slowly emerging to find the things I left behind when school work took over my life. Though I haven't blogged in a really, really, really long time, I've been thinking a lot about my blog these last few months: why I have one - what purpose I see it fulfilling - what compels me to write my thoughts for all to see. What I've found is that I love to write. It gives me great enjoyment to process life by putting words on paper. I love that months later I can go back and reread what I wrote, remembering the process of writing itself--whether the words flowed effortlessly or I struggled to articulate my thoughts, writing the same paragraph again and again--I simply love to write.

As I thought about why I have a blog and what I want to do with my blog, I found that I don't want to have a theme--a knitting blog, a localvore's blog, a gardening blog, a married life blog--I just want to have a place where I can write. So as I struggle to find time to write for fun--in the midst of homework, class, work and life--though I may write about knitting, gardening, eating local or my faith, they will never be the purpose of this blog. This blog will simply be a place to process through life by writing my thoughts. Here's hoping the summer holds more time for this processing and more posts on this blog...

writer's block

So I haven’t blogged in a while because I’m up to my ears in boxes trying to get everything packed for our big move to Massachusetts next week and have just felt so overwhelmed with the details of this move that I’ve found myself with writer’s block. All my ideas for posts just seem stupid or when I sit down to actually write them don’t come together as I envisioned. I think this is because I’ve hit what I’ll call the “quitting time” phase. A lot of people who start a blog write like crazy for a few weeks and then sort of drop off suddenly. It’s like they no longer have anything interesting to write about. It happened to me on my last blog and seems to be striking again.

Which made me think – why do we find ourselves so uninteresting that we can’t even come up with four weeks of material to write about? Are our lives that boring? Or have we become that uncreative? Or maybe a more positive way to think about it is that we crave person-to-person interaction and community and therefore resist opening our lives up to an online community?

For now I find myself without answers, but relieved that at least a blog about having nothing to write about may help me push through my writer's block and hopeful for comments that provide some insight. Successful bloggers – share your secrets!