I've been thinking a lot about blogging lately. Not like actually blogging something but about the act of blogging. I know some tend to have some pretty strong (negative) opinions about blogs and those who blog but I have been thinking a lot about how good it has been for me. I don't keep a journal. I wish I did. But I can just see myself picking up a journal being forced into journal-writing mode, accounting for all the days' hours and when-and-whereabouts and I just don't get a lot out of rereading that kind of stuff.
Because I know that someone besides me may read my blog, I feel a certain amount of pressure (maybe motivation? maybe both?) to write something meaningful, insightful, entertaining, which stretches me and allows me to explore the depths of my creative mind brushing off cobwebs of the olden days when writing used to be a daily activity--even if it was just for some professor.
A friend of mine told me that he tries to scare himself every day. He looks for ways to get out of his La-Z-Boy recliner, take off his Snuggie®, and do something that takes him beyond his iPadded comfort zone. Writing has always been my Snuggie but blogging makes me feel vulnerable which is definitely not in my circle of comfort zone feelings. What if I write something and someone disagrees? What if I write something and I offend someone? What if I write something and everyone reads it and my thoughts become like graffiti on the wall of a subway station--so public that it loses meaning? What if I write something and no one reads it because no one cares what I think?
It definitely scares me. But fortunately, even if it does something or nothing for anyone else, it forces me to be introspective, which is very rewarding for me.
Gordon B. Hinckley said, "All of us ought to pause once in a while and just stop and think. We are prone to talk too much and do too little. I think it is a wonderful thing to just indulge once in a while in moments of introspection."
So thank you, Modern Technology, for amid all of your devices that distract us from thinking and doing, I've found one that provides me with the opportunity to scare myself, be vulnerable and discover new levels of happiness.
And to those of you who think blogging may be self-serving, self-centered, egotistical and whatever other adjectives you want to pin to it, in some way you actually may be right. And I'm okay with that.
