Why Do You Blog?

So, I've been reading a lot of different blogs lately, and with the overcast day and emotions running high, I've decided to post my journal from today.

Why do you blog?

Is it to say something in the privacy and anonymity of a bubble? Or to give a detailed and itemized description of what you ate? To keep your family apprised on your adventures and goings on? Or is it a venue to give the world your view of the political shortcoming of a country? Maybe you blog when you don’t know what to say in the real world. Maybe when confronted with real life, you become overwhelmed and unable to properly embrace your feeling and ideas. It becomes easier to be an observer who never has to define or defend a single thought, value or ideal. It’s easy to take a back seat to life. To watch the world around you go by, never offering an insight or make a personal connection. The problem then becomes a question. Who are you? Or “How can you navigate life through words kept to yourself?” “What kind of personal connections can you make when you are the one sitting alone waiting for others to come to you?”

Sometimes writing is good for the soul. You can describe things and feel things on a different level. The stork chattering to its mate or the e.e. cummings like view on a balcony can only be described in words. It makes sense. But sometimes you need to use those words. Hiding won’t work. You think you don’t have to worry about what people consider important or how your ideas and feelings will affect them. But the sad thing is that in hiding you are underestimating the company you keep. You could be the one to inspire or transform, but instead you are play acting; showing the world one face and writing the world another.

It becomes difficult to tell the difference. What happens when you can’t speak the convictions of your soul? What do you become? A dreamer? Maybe you become someone who can’t take a man at his word. Maybe when a man says he’s bad, he is. Sometimes people are not hiding behind words, sometimes they are speaking the truth and it takes practice to hear it.

So the answer is to speak. Be courageous. Only by talking can we be heard. Writing about it later can’t change things now. Don’t use others’ words as your own. Don’t use others’ experiences as yours. Be in the moment. Don’t let your song be under your breath. You want a mate, a friend, a relationship? Then “be”.

Is this being too sentimental? We feel. Sometimes not all at once. Sometimes in our quietest moments we feel the most. Sometimes we are taught by experiences that feeling outwardly will get us hurt, so we show only a little at a time. But if we only feel inwardly, we won’t get what we want outwardly. And though we want someone to “get” us, to really understand our innermost feelings, we must start by saying. We must be vulnerable not only in our quietest moments, but in the loudest ones too. Only when we allow ourselves to shine through, can we have the kind of relationships we are inwardly hoping for.

This is what I hope my blog is. This and a description of the food I ate, my thoughts about being in a country very different than my own, my adventures and searches to find the perfect pair of shoes, because that’s who I am.