Glennon says: “Reading is my inhale, and writing is my exhale.”
Alan Jacobs says: “Write to think.”
I say (yesterday, to a friend): “I love blogs and especially admire the daily ones. I wish I didn’t treat my blog like it was so precious, so that I could write more often.”
Then, last night, I was reminded of the existence of NaBloPoMo, short for National Blog Post Month. Andrea from Hula Seventy shared that this was her twelfth year of participating. Twelve years! If she can do twelve years, I can do 30 days. Or really, 28, now that I missed the first two.
I want to use this little white box with the blinking cursor to live a bit more intentionally. To work out what it is I want to say, and how it is that I really feel about things. The other day I wrote out a list in my notebook entitled “Current Themes”. Themes! My brain is desperately trying to tell me, I need to exhale. I need to think. Help me grapple with these topics in a way that makes sense.
Because for me, writing is the best way I know to wrestle with the things that are hard, that don’t get neatly wrapped up in a bow. Ideas that don’t have resolution but need acknowledgement. Sometimes the best outcome is that I put my finger on something that bothers me, or give a name to something I struggle with. There’s no real action step to take, or conversation to be had, it just needed to be brought out into the light. I listened to this great podcast episode the other day that reminded me, “as the awareness starts to come in, you actually don’t need to do too much active healing.”
In this case, though, there is an action step to be taken. If I know I need to write, then I need to write. I need to bring in the awareness, shed the light, and get better at noticing and processing. When did I forget that my blog can be whatever I want it to be? Let’s play.
