Yep...still determined to blog, one month later. (That's a good start right?)

So much in my head. Everyday I think about blogging, and how I want to, but how I still feel stuck on what to write. I feel compelled and also obligated since I wrote a month ago about my determination to keep blogging. I want to write about why I’ve waited a month to post again. Because for the first time in awhile, it hasn’t been out of procrastination or lack of desire or lack of opportunity. It’s actually just been out of an unexpected confusion about what I want to use this forum for. 

I still feel this weirdness about the role that blogging is supposed to play in my life. I have my friends and my community here, who are up to date with my life, with the things I’m dealing with and processing. There’s always a lot more in my head than I have opportunity to talk about with them, but nevertheless, my friends are pretty connected to me. So where does the blog fit in when it comes to those friendships? 

That’s part of the struggle. It’s that fear of hypocrisy again…the thing I wrote about with regards to my determination to blog. I want to face that fear down, head-on. I’d never want to present myself differently on my blog than anyone might experience me in real life. And I'd never want to feel uncomfortable with my everyday community reading what I write here. Though it might give them a deeper or different perspective on me, I’d never want it to feel discordant or surprising in a bad way. At a core level, I want to be the same person, everywhere, in every setting.

In the past when I’ve blogged, the majority of my close friends did not live geographically close to me. And for various reasons, I’ve felt isolated from a real, thriving, everyday life community. Today that’s not the case. I have an amazing community. Back then, the blog was a helpful way to share my life with my people who were far away. I still have a ton of those people. But I also have my people here, and a lot of my everyday stuff, which I used to feel more comfortable sharing on the blog, I’m sharing in day to day conversation. Actually my people here are a huge part of my everyday stuff.  (This is a really, really good thing.) And that actually makes it even weirder to write about everyday life here.

I feel like my blog is no longer primarily for stories about my kids, photos of them, or that kind of stuff. Which is a little sad because I really enjoyed that little niche of blog-land while I was a part of it. I loved sewing stuff for Annabel, and then sharing pictures of it. I’ve long wanted to share blog posts about all the house projects we’ve done since moving in here. But the truth is, Facebook is more my venue for that now. Since I’m not an actual photographer, my blog isn’t really the best place for photos. I feel like to share my photos there, it would actually have to be ABOUT the photos. And most of what I want to write these days just wouldn’t fit with that.

It’s more the thinking stuff that I’ve been wanting to share. Which is really how my blog got started (or at least got going) in the first place, with my Jubilee experience. And that’s more the genre in which I want to write. That’s an important part of whatever my “niche” will turn out to be.

Perhaps I need to just think about my favorite blogs at this very moment. They’re really different than what used to be my favorite blogs three years ago, when I got going with blogging (which happened to coincide with the advent of my sewing exploits).

Right now my favorite bloggers (which are very few) are the ones who write about the simplicity of Jesus, who he really was, and what it’s really about to live like he did. Ones which boil things down to GRACE, and LOVE, and FREEDOM. To truly caring for each other, being gentle with each other, and how much more important that is than being in agreement. Because that’s really what life is about. I am so tired of all the extraneous fluff, and argument, and blah blah blah of other stuff. I’m too tired for all of that. Just give me the meat. Get to the point. Tell me straight up what it is you want to say and don’t make it sound prettier or wittier than it really is. Please just make it real. Gritty even. Uncomfortably honest. Because that’s what I long for. That’s what I want out of my friendships, and out of myself. It does not come naturally to me but it’s what I want to move toward, in the relationships that have proven themselves safe for that kind of honesty. 

Because I believe that gritty, and honest, and direct, do not preclude kindness, and warmth, and concern. I can be genuinely me, without wounding you. That's how I want to be. And that's what I want my writing to be like.

Last time I blogged, I shared about my struggle with huge amounts of negativity at home, that really only Nate sees in full. That was uncomfortably honest for me. But really good for me to write about. That's an example of the direction I need to go with this.

What I will share on my blog is never going to be at the vulnerability level of some of my favorite writers, because I just know I don’t have the capacity for that right now. I’m still too fragile and too tender. And that’s fine. But it doesn’t mean I can’t be more real than feels comfortable. It doesn’t mean I can’t be vulnerable enough that it makes my heart pound – but not for its own sake, either. For a purpose. Because whatever it is that I’m sharing, I have some good reason why I want to share it, or at least a strong impression that I should share it. That’s where I’m headed with this blog.

I still am working on figuring out exactly what that looks like, and I don’t really know where that will take me. But I do know that I want to write (that's progress in itself - apathy is receding), and I also know that I need to write (admitting that also equals progress for me). “Writing” may not always mean a blog post. It might just mean journaling, and that’s totally okay. It will probably also mean half-finished blog posts that never end up getting published because I just can’t get back to them before their moment has passed. I already have a few of those from this past month. I don’t know exactly how this will play out, what role my blog will play.

But what I do know is that every time I sit down to journal (which I do on my computer), while during past seasons it’s automatically turned into a prayer or an emotional dump or a huge bullet point list of all the things on my mind, these days, it always seems to start morphing into a blog post. And I guess I just want to pay attention to that. My current favorite writer and blogger says to just look and listen for “the next right thing.” I know that blogging is part of that for me, right now. So even if it’s only once a month, or every two months (though hopefully it will be more like once a week), I need to pursue that and see where it goes. For myself, I need to do that. We’ll see what happens.