Writing

I'm taking a writing class. It's not a creative writing class, it's a form and technique class...which I'm struggling with because my writing is generally, well, fluffy. I don't follow a lot of rules because it seems to squelch my creativity. Some people do fine with form; I could list writers whom I respect because they can dish out art and good mechanics of writing in the same post or article. I'm good with grammar, spelling, the details. It's making it all fit, writing a thesis that makes sense and then sticking to it, especially in an essay that is longer than two paragraphs. I tend to wander...there is so much information I want to transmit that I struggle to put it all together in a meaningful way, and struggle even more with knowing what to edit to make it work. It has to fit into a certain box, and you know how well I like boxes. :)

I did a Google search of my name today...do you ever do that? Today, i's not out of some sense of ego, but simply to see what's out there. However, I used to do it to help find the links of people who had linked to my posts, and to make me feel good. But I hadn't done a search in probably over a year, because frankly I'm just not writing that much anymore, and I don't really care how many people link to me (I haven't even logged in to sitemeter or statcounter for close to a year, I just realized). So today when I searched I found some things that I never knew. And it surprised me, and reminded me that I used to be a good blogger...I used to write thought provoking, interesting or meaningful posts on a regular basis...posts that people LIKED. Wow.

I hope you see the sarcasm there...one ought not think too highly of herself, you know? And I do still think I can be a good writer and I do still think some people still like my posts. That's fine. There is no doubt that my life has taken many turns in the last year, and those turns had led me away from writing.

Then again, I miss those days when I had something profound to say...because today, my spiritual life is so integrated, so common, so ordinary, that there scarcely seems to be anything to say about it. I'm OK with that.

One of my closest friends is going through something really difficult right now. It puts many things in perspective, and causes me to think more carefully about what is really important. I love her and want to be supportive in so many ways, and because of that I can't help but be more aware of what I value in my own life.

One of those things is writing.

I think I got big-headed....thinking I had to write well or profoundly for it to be worth it. This blog didn't used to be that way...it's an evolution I underwent as I began to find my name in Google searches. Frankly, the way I got there was by writing what was on my mind in the moment, always with the caveat that I reserved the right to change my mind at any time. I started small...many many posts with nary a commenter except Cindy (thanks for being there for so long) and I was fine with that. One day I realized I was having some 50 or even 100 comments on a post...and then I was like 'big time". Somewhere along the way my values became skewed to thinking that if a post didn't generate comments, it wasn't good. And I wrote for that. When did I decide that people should care about me, should care about what I write, and therefore it ought to be good? I shouldn't expect anyone to care...I just am who I am and I write because I am.

So here I am writing about anything just to write. Someone said you should never use an emoticon in a blog post, it's unprofessional. Who cares? ;)