“Why do you want to do that?”
That was the question my wife asked me when I told her that I was thinking about starting a new blog, and, more specifically, writing via the platform on Medium.
It was not asked in a derogatory sense. Let me be clear: my wife is the single most supportive person in my life no matter what I’m attempting. I could have chosen to take offense to what she was asking, but I know that it was not meant in an offensive way. She genuinely wanted to know why I wanted to start writing on a regular basis… again…
This is not my first attempt at developing a regular practice of writing.
I have tried several times to be consistent when it comes to blogging. In my previous attempts, I would make myself sit down and write out something on a Thursday morning because I decided that Thursday should be the day that I publish something new on my blog. (Why Thursday? I have no idea; that’s how much thought I put into some of these things previously.)
I had no plan. I had no real reason for writing. Frankly, I had no idea if people were even reading it in the first place. Even if somebody was reading my blog, I didn’t know who or why. I was not putting any kind of thought into what I was writing until I was writing it.
Not too long ago, I moved my original blog from its longtime home to a new location simply because I was having trouble changing the layout of the website. I wrote consistently for a couple of weeks but felt unfocused, unable to come up with a reason as to why I wanted to write on a regular basis. I knew what I wanted to write about in a general sense, but still had no real reason as to why.
And content creation? Don’t get me started on that!
I had no clue what I was doing. I had no direction. And, frankly, I had no desire to do the work to find one. I’m busy (aren’t we all?), and I don’t have the time to give to a blog. The fact of the matter is, I wrote a blog because I felt like that was what I needed to do. There was something within me that expressed the desire to write, but there was nothing driving me to do it.
As you can imagine, my previous attempts have not gone well.
And so, when my wife asked me why I wanted to write, I had to really think about the answer.
Her question was not unfair. It was not unsupportive. It was instrumental.
What is going to separate this go-around with blogging from previous attempts? That was the question that I had to answer.
My wife and I have two kids. They are beautiful, fun, entertaining, smart and all the other superlatives that parents want to throw out there about their children. Our children have memorable birth dates. Our Star Wars baby Hannah is 3.5 going on 15, and our New Years baby Henry is almost 2. Going anywhere with those two means prepping for Armageddon.
We have to load up the diaper bag with plenty of diapers, wipes, snacks, water bottles, extra clothes, toys and other implements of destruction. There is an extensive mental checklist that needs to be cleared before we begin boarding. And then there is the whole process of actually getting them into the right car (we only have two cars, it shouldn’t be that hard… shouldn’t be).
And all of this takes place before we even leave the house!
That’s what it is like to go through the process of finding one’s purpose for just about anything. It’s about thinking through all the doomsday scenarios, preparing for them, and realizing that there is something you forgot to take into consideration.
Re-entry into the blogging world is going to take a lot of planning. It’s thinking through some of the issues that are laying low in the reeds, wiggling their butts, and waiting to pounce when we least expect it. Obviously, there’s no way that I can think of all the issues that will come up, but that is what I have been doing for the last couple of months as I have considered jumping back into the blogosphere. It’s going to be more work than I have done in the past.
It’s going to mean developing a discipline of writing. This has been where I have fallen short in times past. I have not made a dedicated space in my schedule for writing. I am not new to writing. In fact, as part of my job, I am writing and speaking on a weekly basis — I’ll say more about my vocation down the road.
And it means that I am going to have to put myself out there. Of course, this is the real hard part. As a high “I” introvert with some mild social anxiety, I tend to keep to myself — even digitally. Not because I feel like I am the best company I can find, but because it is draining to be around people for extensive periods of time. I do not tend to put myself in new and awkward situations.
And I’m okay with all of these things that I need to do in order to be “successful” in writing (note: for me, success is going to mean consistency — readership, clicks, views… if it comes, it comes). I can’t say that I enjoy writing if I don’t do it on a regular basis. If it’s something I enjoy, then it’s something I will do.
I have a lot of ideas that have been ruminating in my mind lately. And, instead of relying on my memory to bring them to the forefront when I start writing, I actually have a plan on how to capture some of these ideas when they happen so that I don’t forget them.
Life is full of great ideas that can be shared; capturing them is the real trick to writing.
So, why do I write? I write as a way of communicating with other people. I write as a creative outlet. I write because the painstaking work of crafting sentences, paragraphs, and stories helps me make sense of the world. Writing helps me express myself in ways that I cannot otherwise.
