Blogging

On writing

path

It’s been pretty quiet around here lately. What a change from my early days of blogging back in 2007. Back then, I wrote about everything. Ideas were always crowding in, asking to be explored in a blog post. Now, I don’t seem to have anything to say.

So I thought I’d write about not having anything to say.

Which comes first, the flatness or the voicelessness? Is it that life seems flat, so you don’t write about it, and then it becomes a habit? Or is it that the failure to write about one’s life and thought robs life of richness?

Certainly, for me, it does. But I’m not sure why I stopped writing in the first place. (Or why I seem to be going through a phase of abortive reading attempts. I can’t seem to complete a book to save my life. But maybe that’s another problem for another day.)

Blogging has always served multiple purposes. It’s given me a feeling of connection to the outside world that’s legitimate and valuable to a stay-at-home mother. It’s provided a forum for sharing ideas and stimulated my interaction with books. It forms a record of intellectual seasons that has lasted longer than any previous journal, and though it’s intentionally not reflective of the most private and personal dimensions of my life, the aspects I’ve been able to write about here are very meaningful to me.

But maybe the most important thing blogging has helped me to do is to establish a consistent writing habit. It bothers me to have lost that. I’d like to get it back.

6 Comments

  • Barbara H.

    Maybe this is just a season of quietness, or thoughtfulness vs. expression? I have times when I have dozens of things going through my mind and then times when it seems there’s not much significant beyond the every-day.

    • Janet

      Sometimes when I’ve minimized my time online my thought life has flourished… but these days it’s more like I’m getting absorbed into the day to day, as you say. Kind of deadening.

  • DebD

    I’ve been pondering many of these same thoughts for the last 6-8 months. For me it’s mostly flatness. I just don’t really have much to say, and, when I think I do, I wonder if it really matters much anyway. I’ve also noticed that most of my regular blogging friends have stopped writing two. Perhaps I have one or two additions to my RSS feeder per day and it’s usually the same bloggers. So many have just stopped blogging. I hold onto my blog because, like you, I still remember that connectedness that I really enjoyed with people like you and many other thoughtful bloggers. FB doesn’t even come close (not even on FB anyway). Forums are nice, but not the same – and not as intimate either.

    Anyway, all that to say I don’t know what I’m going to do either. At times I’m ready to close shop and I’m perfectly content with that. But, then I think of my fellow blogging friends and I sorely miss them. It’s partly this season in my life too. I’m at a cross-roads… and I don’t know what I’m going to do for the next 10-20-30years either. Yes, a lot to ponder.

  • Janet

    “For me it’s mostly flatness. I just don’t really have much to say, and, when I think I do, I wonder if it really matters much anyway.” Yes! — that’s just how I feel.

    Then I think, writing generates writing, and thought generates thought, and all of it does enrich life. And I think, what doesn’t seem worth saying now may matter someday, if only to me, if I capture and record it. I guess it’s partly a question of whether this is the place for it.

    I do miss your blog and am always glad to see a post.

    Crossroads get old… I hope a clear direction will open up soon.

  • Alice@Supratentorial

    I’m in the same place, Janet and Deb. I find myself not blogging, then missing it, but either having no ideas or when I do have an idea wondering what the point is.

    For what it’s worth, I enjoy reading what you do write. But I know it’s not always enough to know that others are reading and enjoying.

  • Janet

    I guess this is a common place to be.

    There is just so much noise out there already. The idea of adding to it doesn’t have much appeal!

    Now that I’m online less, I also wonder how I found the time to blog so much. There are lots of things I was choosing not to do in order to blog. I don’t want to lose them, either…

    Maybe blogging has a lifespan…?