How To Blog … Again

I’m off of social media and no longer plugged in to the greater online community of friends’ and family activities. This blog is thus an outlet for inviting connection from our end. I’m back writing on Joanna’s blog – now with a twist!

Back to Blogging    

Starting Again For me, this simple, plain blog is nothing mundane at all. Since I began this blog on our honeymoon about a year ago, I wanted to continue writing and sharing about life.  I stopped, however, because I found myself wondering, Who cares what I have to say? I couldn’t find an answer, so it became, No one cares – least of all me.  In crept doubt about my own voice, having simply lost motivation and inspiration to write, let alone share. The sad truth is that I didn’t believe my experiences or thoughts mattered enough to blog about.

Why return to the blog now?  As of this post, I am in the final two weeks of my pregnancy, about to be a first-time mom. I have known for a long time now that I want to be a great mother. To do that, I must be the kind of woman who inspires my daughter to be the fullest and greatest version of herself that she can be. I want her to believe, for example, that she is worthy of participating in the world in whatever way she finds most meaningful. To do this, I must show her the way, and to show her the way, I must do it first myself.  For me, that’s trusting and raising my own true voice. Writing is how I hear my voice, how I know myself on the most true level. I have been inspired all my life by those who chose to know their true selves, and then chose to share with the world. I chose now to flip the script on, Who cares to hear what you have to say?  to  May this effort to speak my own true voice be of benefit.

Writing in my own true voice is to hear myself expound on it on the written page. To be willing to see my own experience as valid enough to spend time hearing and writing is the one place I have resisted going. I know come forward, going deeper into my inner world to unveil what’s true, to let it have light, to breathe life into what I let stay buried or hidden… here I am.  I will write about the “little now,” the small moments of what’s happening in the present moment, and the “big now,” the larger themes, questions and challenges made evident through sitting with what is.  Little Now, Big Now. 

In my writing class, I wrote these instructions on how to begin.

Little Now, Big Now: How To Blog in 4 Steps

1. Disavow your obsession with your computer. Turn off the internet and all of the distracting displays. They steal your attention from your own blog, like walking through a carnival, the long, loud street of tents and games on your way home at the end of the block.  Don’t stop at the balloon stand, don’t stop and stare in at the cotton candy vendor spinning blue sugar on a paper cone amid a crowd of eager children intoxicated and lost in the comforting smell warm sugar. Don’t return to the clothing tent to try on that dress again that you never forget but also never buy. How can you begin to write if you take all day to get home? Closing your browser window, muting and blinding yourself to the colors and calls of the circus around you, you head confidently straight for our notebook and pen awaiting you on your front porch. The path to your writing has now begun.
2. Start in the little now  As soon as you sit down at the notebook page, you must befriend it. This page must become extremely captivating to you – an attraction bordering on obsession. A new lover whose mind you long to know. The page, the subject of your deepest level of attention, opens to you. It allows you to know reality, fear and truth – all you can imagine and beyond. The promise of a true friend, a faithful companion reliable, present, there to share and reveal all you would know and hear. So sit, stay, and in your sense faculties, feel your true experience speak to you here on the porch. Today, at this hour, with the contents of your mind and heart as they are, the will of your attention to your page calls forth from you what resides within. Your truth, told in the voice of the little now, flows freely from the pen.  The call of the cuckoo bird mourning the end of the day as the big sky quietly pulls a long blind over the sun. The murmur of voices above tinkling glasses and silverware as a dinner event beyond sight in the dawning evening begins to take off.  This is your moment, when your ears, eyes and the air touching your skin this very evening call forward in you all that means to open. This is where the little now blossoms into the Big Now. 
3. Go Deep into the Big Now  The content of your blog goes beyond this evening’s little now. The reason you feel, the little signals of what wants to be known, seen and understood begin to reveal themselves in the Big Now. The theme, the story, the life of beyond what’s known lifts its head to speak in the voice of the birth and dimming of the sun. Reality voices its truth through what we see and feel in the little now – the purpose of why you write, for example, what calls you to be. The great loss of face, and thus of fear. The sadness of being unable to cover the terrible, scary truth. And the unbearable light of bravery wanting to break open what holds you back. As you massage the page with the careful diligence of the pen, pump it for information. What is a piece of writing will appear as your blog post.
4. Clean and release  The title of your piece arises from the meeting of the Big and little now. Clean and tenderize your piece by taking the pages inside your home from the porch. Let it mellow, soak as if in a bath. Run through its hair the teeth of a comb, straightening the pieces, and freeing the snarls and kinks from from its wild locks.  Clean, rested, well-cared for and developed into is own self it walks freely from your home out into the world. Post it on your blog page in the internet carnival where it lives amid the vast displays.