Added later: real writing? What do I mean by that? I want to edit it because it doesn't seem accurate, but I want to leave it because I'm struck by the fact that that's what I wrote originally. Real writing. Hmm..
Anyway...
Blogging... it's a funny thing how it's different from real writing.
Even though there are only 3.5 people, maybe, who read each thing I post on here, there's something different about blogging.
When I look today and see that my last post is from June 7– Hey, I was still 25 then!– I at first feel ashamed, as if I have been abandoning my first love of writing completely. Thankfully, I know that my Day One journal app and my good, old-fashioned paper journals, which I love for their realness and paperness and ink-and-graphite-smoothness, do hold writing since June 7, not as much as needed or wanted, but enough to keep me going.
I have been writing, but I haven't been blogging, which leads me to this reflection, which no one cares about but that I'm going to post anyway, about how blogging is different.
Writing that is blogged is somehow more final. There could be an audience. I mean, it probably wouldn't happen, especially with this one, but something conceivably could get shared on the internet and become a sensation. I mean it could. So I have to be careful and make sure it's something I wouldn't mind attaching my name to.
But, in reality, the actual reason it's more final, in my real world of maybe 3.5 readers, is there will almost definitely be at least a small audience, a few faithful friends who follow the blog and will read out of obligation or curiosity or maybe even excitement since its been over half a year since I last posted– how did I let that happen?!– when they get they email announcing I have written. (And I really am grateful for my friends who care what I write! I'm not disparaging the 3.5 of you– a group of actually more than 3 or 4 people who won't actually all read at any given time, which is why I've made the average smaller... You are few in number but great in love and importance.)
But anyway.
Blogged writing is more final. It won't just live in Day One for me alone or stay scrawled in my notebook where only I will revisit it. Someone, at least one other person, will read it, maybe even comment or refer to it later.
Someone could actually call me out– Hey, remember, you said you were going to love your job this year, remember? (Btw, I actually told someone on Christmas Eve– one of my incredible teachers past, one of the first who inspired me to write and to teach, perfectly enough– that I love teaching. I said it all genuinely and naturally without thinking about it. It shocked me as it came out. It was kind of astounding. I'm still reeling at it now as I relive it. I don't know the last time I said that without planning it or forcing it. It was either a crazy slip or a crazy epiphany.)
Someone could actually talk to me about how ridiculous my number of posts about or referring to John Mayer lyrics is getting and how I need to get it together.
Someone could see the depths of what I'm wrestling and know that John Mayer's lyric is still true in me– So what? So I've got a smile on? Well, it's hiding the quiet superstitions in my mind. Don't believe me, don't believe me, when I say I've got it down. (Good luck, imaginary person who would tell me to quit quoting John Mayer. Not gonna happen.)
Actually, that has happened. Well, not stopping the JM obsession or someone telling me to but someone seeing the depths of my wrestling. One of my high school friend's father, a dear friend in his own right, a pillar of our hometown, told me that he reads my blog from time to time. He told me, looking me straight in the eyes, Your struggles are quite– what was the word?– compelling?
There's something about knowing that the struggles have been aired, that anyone can read them, that someone may feel them along with me or that, even if they're completely foreign to the reader who's never felt anything like them, they've been written and they've been read.
And they're out there for anyone to see.
Someone could disagree with what I think are spiritual break-throughs and call me out as a heretic. I don't know who would be so bold in my group of sweet-natured friends. But someone could.
Or someone could say, Wow, how did you put to words exactly how I feel? Like I want to say to JM and to Sara Groves and to random bloggers and singers out there who've done that for me.
Someone, a favorite author of mine, could make a comment on a post and start a chain of events that would lead to Jason and me meeting new friends in Nashville and having a new favorite blog to read and maybe even more in the future... Actually, that already happened, and the story isn't finished yet...
Maybe even someone, not John Mayer himself perhaps, but maybe someone close to him in charge of his PR doing Google searches of his name, or maybe a friend, will discover this blog and say, "John, we've found someone you need as a friend, someone who gets you."
Which reminds me– I should write about Dolly Parton more so that could happen with her too.
Alright, now I've gone and gotten weird.
And I've pretty much forgotten what I'm even writing about at this point.
So it's time to stop. I just want to say that there's something different about blogging, knowing that the words are going out to the world. Even if no one reads them. The words are out there, gone, and mine.
It makes me feel like a writer. A real writer.
So I need to blog more.
Because I am a writer.
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