One of my new online friends, Kelly Diels, posted this quote today on Twitter:
Between page and writer is a magnetism
more compelling than any other relationship.
Betsy Warland
Since launching my business a couple of days ago and more aggressively marketing myself as a Blog Coach, I’ve had a number of people ask me why I’m so compelled by blogging. There are lots of reasons. I tend to think about and focus on the benefits in three major categories: business growth, personal branding, and personal development. This post focuses more on the latter – some of the personal impact of blogging:
Blogging is a way to get outside ourselves.
If you’re anything like me, you have a myriad of thoughts and emotions swimming in your head/heart all the time. And the longer they stay there, often the more confusing and/or dark they become. We need to get them out into the light of day. We need to be heard. And when that happens, when we finally let them out (even if only in small bits and pieces) we are healthier. We breathe a little bit deeper. We rest a little more. Some of the weight lightens. And we start to change. I’m not kidding. This really happens!
Blogging is therapeutic.
Maybe just an extension of the paragraph above, there is something powerful about being exposed. In therapy we enter into conversation with another – conversation about our past, our secrets, our wounds, our memories, our desires, our hopes, our fears. And that conversation is safe. Though we may often feel undone by it, a good therapist has the capacity to create an environment of trust that lets us reveal every bit of ourselves – with no risk. Now I won’t go so far to say that blogging is the same. Nor will I even come close to saying that blogging is, in any way, a replacement for therapy. But it is a good conversational space – even if only with ourselves – in which we can reveal ourselves. There are powerful (and appropriate) ways to use a blog as a processing space, a vulnerable space, a learning space, even a safe space. And, bottom line in therapy? We change. I believe the same is possible through blogging. We change. I’m not kidding. This really happens.
Blogging helps us tell our story.
Believe me, you have one. Isak Dinesen said, “To be a person is to have a story to tell.” But way too many of us don’t live as if this is true. We go through our days, our weeks, our months, our years without reflection, without perspective, without being aware of plot twists and turns, character development, villains, heroes, tragedy, comedy, romance, even action-adventure. We’re living a story that’s filled with all of these elements. When we blog we begin to recognize and appreciate the complexity of our lives, the recurrent themes, the predominant thoughts that shape our way of being, relating, loving, working…everything. Blogging is a space in which we can recount everything from the mundane to the most complex of concepts, but in between the lines, reveal something of ourselves. We are telling our stories – whether we mean to or not. And our story matters. When we begin to realize this, we change. I’m not kidding. This really happens.
So think about it. Think about how blogging might help you get outside yourself, how it might be therapeutic, and how it might help you better understand, tell, and live your own story. Even if only one of these three occurred – even just in part – wouldn’t it be worth it? Yep. I’m right about this.
When you write, you have to attempt
something greater than you can possibly hope to accomplish.
That is the only way you can leave a hole, a gap -
some chance for a miracle.
(Heather Harpham, from I Went to the Animal Fair)
Related posts:
voices
No Excuses
Writing like Ayn Rand
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Ronna,
I just love this. I think often – and am often challenged – about why I blog. About the obvious need for a reader, which seems very different than a private journal. About what my blog is “about” – I am challenged constantly to be more clear about the goal or focus of my blog, and I simply can’t answer those questions. I am coming to the conclusion that, like me, my blog is perhaps in the “defies categorization” category.
But understand WHY I am compelled to do this thing, this writing in a public forum, surrounded by people I at once know and do not know … that is a critical thought exercise.
Thank you for writing this – it says very clearly many of my most inarticulate thoughts and reasons.
Lindsey
http://www.adesignsovast.com
.-= Lindsey´s last blog .. =-.
Thanks, Lindsey. There is a compulsion to it…something that holds and pulls and wrenches and invites. And all of that is good – whether defined, categorized, or not. Your writing is beautiful, exposing, brilliant, vulnerable…you. That may be reason enough.
{ 8 trackbacks }