Do or Do Not
When I said I’d be back when my kids were settled in school, you didn’t think I meant March? Huh. Guess I should’ve been more specific. It’s nearly spring and we’re as settled as we’re ever going to be. I’ve been engulfed by non-blogging concerns, in my chrysalis, quiet, molting, gestating. This required silence. Silence and lots of sweating at SoulCycle. (Who knew? Turns out 45 minutes of spinning in place can get you very far). That and saying no to almost everything.
My theory on the explosion of female-centric, often mom-centric blogging is there are many women out there who feel isolated or marginalized or maybe just inconsequential. Blogging offers a way of trying out one’s voice, staking a claim on a little piece of the world, saying “I am here”. It can be good writing, it can be bad, mostly it is unedited. Everyone’s writing can benefit from someone else’s red pen, but personal blogging is not that. It isn’t literature and it can be the worst form of self-publishing. There are the pitfalls of over-sharing and feeling vulnerable afterwards. But for many of us, it’s a way of existing outside our noisy minds, putting our flag in the ground, saying: this here, this is mine.
I keep getting notices that my domain registration is going to expire Thursday. As has been my way, I’ve been agonizing about what to do. This is a wonderful form of mental masturbation. Wracking my brain trying to figure it out, to come up with the “right” answer can be a mind-consuming exercise of deciding nothing.
Yoda’s words came to mind: “Do or do not”.
All while I’m wrestling with whether to do or do not, the gall of a nobody like me writing a blog, an email dings in my inbox Sunday afternoon. There is an opportunity for me to teach a writing class for a small group of at-risk teens. Writing. Social Work. Teenagers. The belief that writing can save your life.
I’m following the signs.
(image found here)
