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Changing gears

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When I made a lot of jewelry in college, I would go on binges. I’d feel really creative and make just one earring of each set. I’d make about twenty different single earrings like this. To slow down long enough to finish out the pair would stop the flow. I’d leave the tray of singles aside until another day, when I wasn’t feeling as creative but I wanted something to do. Then I’d make the other one.

I’m finding it is the same with writing. I’ve reached a slower part. It is now time to condense everything and sift out what needs to go into a book.

There are plenty of contenders for the first book. I feel like I’ve written about three, all at once, over sixteen months. I certainly hadn’t planned on writing this much.

It isn’t all awesome. Some of it is rambling. Some of it is just a warm up for the rest. Some of it is pretty worthwhile. Some of it surprises me. Some of it I don’t remember writing.

The funny part is that with writing and jewelry it is the same. The stuff that I really like, that I poured a lot of work into, is the stuff that gets ignored. My “throwaway” pieces get far more notice and attention. Well, except for the stuff I publicize. When I’ve posted stuff on well-trafficked pages on Facebook, I’ve gotten thousands of hits.

For a while I was writing three posts a day. Sometimes five. For a while I’d wake up with a new idea for something to write every morning. Then I’d get new ideas during the day and I’d jot them down in my notebook. For a while I felt like the ideas were wrestling for my attention, demanding to be written. For a while it was overwhelming.

It has slowed down quite a bit, and I’m glad in a way. I’m a little concerned it means that things are drying up, but I still have my notebooks full of ideas. They are like little seeds. Just water them with a little time and they will grow into full sized posts. They are like zip files – compressed information. The ideas were coming so fast it was almost like I had to take shorthand in order to catch them.

Now is the time of sorting. I’ve sort of pre-sorted all along. I’ve put posts into categories and I’ve tagged them. The only issue is that some posts are in multiple categories and some have multiple tags. While this is fine in a blog, it isn’t fine in a book. Books are very linear. Blogs are very, well, not.

I’m not a big fan of sorting, but it doesn’t do itself. Sometimes I think I’d like to have minions. It would be nice to have an assistant to sort and sift. But then whatever comes out of this is going to have my name on it, so it needs to be all stuff that I not only like but can stand behind.

I’m sorting things roughly now. I’ve created a separate blog just for the religious/spiritual pieces to help me organize. Interestingly, that blog has its own set of followers. I don’t advertise it. But creating it gives me a different way to look at what I’m sorting out. I put the posts in folders on my computer as well. Then I’ll go through and look at them again, closer, and weed out what isn’t quite useful at this time.

It is kind of like making a jigsaw puzzle, except it doesn’t have the ease of visuals. I can’t just look at a post like I can with a puzzle piece and tell that it has a bit of sky in it, so it goes over here. I have to read the posts closely for themes. It takes longer.

Just getting them from one blog to the other (and the folders in between) takes a long time. It was really slow going for a while but I’ve finally learned to open up two browsers. I’m almost embarrassed to admit how I was doing it before. It was quite clunky and I was losing posts. I was also getting confused as to how I was sorting them.

This work is pretty dull in some ways, and interesting in others. I’m coming across some posts that I’ve forgotten. I’m also a bit amazed at how much I’ve written. I have no idea if this will do well as a book either. I may spend a lot of money self publishing it and nothing will happen. Sure, it is already “published” on the web, but there is something about having an actual book that says “real author”. Of course, having it published by a “real” publishing company versus self-publishing says that.

The stigma is going away for self-publishing. People don’t look askance at it. There are plenty of stories of authors these days being turned down by major publishing houses, only to go ahead and publish their work on their own. Then they make a lot of money, and the publishing house begs their forgiveness. Then they show a contract to the author, and the author realizes that she would lose a lot of money to get her book published by them. It is kind of like going freelance versus working for a company. An electrician who works on his own charges a lot less and takes home a lot more than the one who works for a business. Plus, people seem to like the renegade, the rebel, the self-starter. People cheer on the underdog.

I’m reminded that Emily Dickinson’s poems were unknown to anyone other than her in her lifetime, and that Mozart wasn’t acclaimed anywhere near what he is now. I’m also reminded that even Thoreau self published a book.

Do I want fame? Not really. Do I want the ideas that have come to me to change the world? Yes. Do I trust that God’s hand is in all of this? Yes, and no. But this is normal for me. I want to make the frog’s legs grow faster, because the tadpole is too slow. I feel like my “push”, my desire to get things done, is from God. Is it, or is it just me being impatient? A lot of it is trusting the process, and just showing up, right? I think if I pray hard and work hard, then what will happen next is what is meant to happen. I think that if I work to align myself with God, then I’m on the right path no matter what happens. I think that even if I think I’m off the path, it turns out that is part of the path too.

Writing a book.

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I want to write a book. Well, essentially, I’ve already written a book. I just need to put it together.

I’ve been writing a book all along with this blog. I’ve actually been writing several books. Each post is a page or two. I’ve got way more than enough posts and enough topics to write about three books right now. The problem is sifting through everything. In a way it is like assembling a jigsaw puzzle. Or maybe it is like disassembling one.

Ideally, I would have been copying what I’ve been writing into a Word document, sorting it into folders, all along. That way it would already be done. I didn’t do that, because I didn’t know that was what I wanted to do. Now I know better.

The problem is time. I still have a forty hour a week job. And the new ideas keep coming. It is hard to do it all at once. But then again, I am having a hard time believing that I’ve written as much as I have in sixteen months. When I started I had the goal of posting three times a week, with the hidden goal of at least once a day. I’ve far surpassed that.

What I need to do is sit down and start sorting. I’ve done some of it. There is a lot more to go through.

I just have to commit to doing this daily. Even a little bit a day and it is done. While feel obliged to post something new every day, then I remember that nobody is paying me for this. Some days I’ve posted anywhere up to five things. So I’m ahead.

I think I’m using the idea of “I have to spend the time working on new things” as a diversion to not work on this project.

And that lets me know it is the “yetzer hara” doing the talking. This is the Jewish idea of the “negative influence” that tries to stop us from doing good things. I have learned to use its powers against it, like in aikido. When I feel it trying to prevent me, then I know I’m onto something really good and amazing. It actually spurs me on, rather than preventing me – once I notice it.

So, it is time for a shift in energy. Time to start sorting. I’ll try to post new things too because that is a good exercise for me. But I’ll try to use things that I’ve already worked on part-way rather than stuff I have to start from scratch. There are plenty of ideas that I’ve gotten some of the way into and just not finished. This way I’ll be using them up and not taking as much time. This way I’ve got more time to sort.

But mostly, I’m going to spend some of my writing time as book time. This stuff doesn’t do itself, and I don’t have minions. Even if I did, I’d want to make sure that anything that has my name on it is the way I want it.

The only thing to it is to do it. Wish me luck. Sometimes the biggest battles are in our heads.

On being a “real” author.

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I’m looking at publishing some of my blog in book form. This has lead to a lot of questions. Do I self publish? If so, who with? How much do I want to do on my own? Do I try to find a “real” publisher? And perhaps more importantly, what do I hope to gain from publishing my words in book form?

They are already out in the world. They have already been seen. They are available all the time to anyone who has access to the internet.

In part I want to provide an experience. I want to provide an order and a flow to it. I wrote my pieces at different times and with different topics. And not everything is that great.

In part I had to write some of the “meh” pieces to get to the “ah ha” pieces. I’m reminded of the idea that you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince. So you have to write a lot of posts before you find your focus.

In a way I want to provide an appetizer, then a four course meal, then the dessert. I want the posts to lead from one to another in a logical way. I want them to be grouped together in a logical way too. There is an order of sorts with the blog because of tags and of categories, but there is nothing saying that people will go from one to another in order. That is a strength and a weakness to a blog.

Right now what I have written is more like an uncompleted jigsaw puzzle. That was helpful to me at the beginning. I allowed myself to write whatever I wanted and in whatever order. This meant that I didn’t have any rules. Sometimes rules help and sometimes they hinder. I felt that if I told myself I could only write about one topic at a time then I’d miss some posts that would be valuable. In a way it is like drawing without any lines. You have to do whatever works to get the work done.

Recently I was talking with a guy with a company that is a division of Thomas Nelson. That company’s name would be in my book, but it would still be mine and I would pay for it. It wouldn’t be cheap. The starting price is one thousand dollars.

Cough.

Now, that amount of money isn’t just for their name. They would do the formatting. They would create the cover. They would professionally print it. They would proofread and edit it. Basically all I’d have to do is write it, and really, that is already done.

Now, it would have to fit in their strict guidelines. They are a Christian company. They don’t allow slander, cursing, or plagiarism in their books. You also have to actually state that you, the author, are Christian.

In a way they would legally protect me too. They would make sure that nothing in it could come back to haunt me.

But a thousand dollars is a lot of money. I’d get just ten copies for that. I’d have to pay for more copies.

The representative was trying to rush me, to get me to commit to them. He wanted me to hand over money before he even looked at my work.

I told him that I know his job is to get the little fishes into the basket. He laughed. He couldn’t say anything to that because “The call will be recorded for quality assurance purposes.”

I was being kind. His job is to hook them, to reel them in.

I said I’ll think about it. I haven’t dismissed that avenue. That name is a respected one in the book world. They have high standards. Their books are good inside and out. If I went with them, that would make my work look even better and give it a level of authority.

He mentioned something that publishing your own book is like starting an independent business. If you are going to open a coffeeshop, do you go and do your own thing, or do you go with a known brand? Do you have a small Mom and Pop shop or do you lease a Starbucks? He said that people gravitate towards the already known and already tried. Also, if you go with the known brand they’ve worked out a lot of the kinks for you.

But, a lot of people I know trust the individual shop more. They like the quirks and charm of a one-off. They’d rather support an independent over a chain any day. They know that more time and attention goes into the independent shop. They care, because they have to.

What I need to do now is to separate the wheat from the chaff. I need to focus in on one topic or a related group of topics and put them all together. I’d need to do this for any publisher – whether it is “real” or self-published. I already have a good idea of what posts the most useful or helpful that I’d like to use.

There is nothing stopping me from trying with CreateSpace. It is the self-publishing division of Amazon and is totally free. I’d have to do most of the work. The reviews are good. I have friends who have used them and they like them very much. But you get what you pay for.

The marketing is the same with both companies. There is none. I’d have to do it all on my own.

And, as people are pointing out, actual brick and mortar book stores are disappearing. So why am I worried about the idea of how am I going to get my book on the shelves and into the hands of readers?

I certainly don’t just want to just sell to my friends. That is a very limited pool. I want a wide audience. I knew someone who got in on a pyramid scheme of selling supplements. The pyramid collapsed on him because he was only able to market to his family and friends. He ended up having to buy a lot of the product himself. That is insane.

I am bold enough to say that I think that some of the things I have written are revolutionary, and helpful, and needed. I am bold enough to say that I think everybody should read what I have to say, especially Christians. They will be the most challenged by it, and they will give me the most flak.

Boldness is part of writing. Just writing, even if it is just for yourself, is claiming your voice. It is saying that what you think matters and needs to take up space in the world. To post it for your friends to read is another step. To post it so strangers can read it is a further one.

I feel like I am just getting braver and braver with each step.

Where am I headed?

Further away, or closer towards? I think that perhaps it is a little of both.

Self made self.

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I find it fascinating how easy it is to create a brand identity. You can print your own business cards, address labels, and letterhead. You can put your logo on hats, t-shirts, and water bottles. Anything that you can imagine can be printed with your own name and logo. You can print your own book and publish your own website and blog. It is all very easy and inexpensive, and pretty amazing. So where is the line, or does there need to be one? What makes someone official? The logo? The certification? The experience?
For some jobs they ask for four years of school or four years of equivalent experience. They are considered equal. However, way too many people go through four years of school and they still don’t know anything when they graduate and get hired. Another person at the same job can have four years of experience behind her, but no diploma. So what does the diploma mean? Somebody else thinks you might know how to do something? You test well?
Maybe there is something to just doing it anyway and not waiting for someone to give you permission or certification or credentials. They say the suit makes the man, after all. So maybe the book makes the author.
Maybe we have entered into a time when people don’t have to do it the old way. Maybe we have entered into a time where self publishing doesn’t have the air of desperation it used to. It used to be called a “vanity press”, but now famous people are self-publishing and essentially giving the finger to the big publishing houses. They are doing it all themselves and taking all the money.
Maybe people have just gotten tired of waiting for someone to invite them to the dance and they decided to put on their favorite shoes and go and have a great time. The more you do for yourself, the more control you have over it.
I sold beaded jewelry I made on my college campus. I had all my creations in a metal Bahlsen cookie tin. I did fairly well, and learned a lot about human psychology. It was amazing how many women were so proud of my creativity and entrepreneurship. It was also amazing how many men wanted a piece of the action.
Several men said they could “help” me sell my jewelry, for a cut. They said would show off and take anywhere up to 25%. They never volunteered to help me for free, or take the time to help me make the jewelry in the first place. I felt like they were being pimps. I’d do all the hard work and they’d get some money. This hardly seemed fair. I always said no.
So maybe it is the same with schools and credentialing. Maybe they just want their cut. You do all the work and they give you a piece of paper for all your trouble. Maybe it is the same with publishing houses. I do all the writing and they get all the money.

On manna and writing

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I have more “seeds” for posts than I have time to write. I carry a notebook with me all the time. I have a list of ideas in my phone as well. Any time I get an idea that I think is worthy of expanding on later I’ll put in one of those places.

Sometimes I get to write from these idea-seeds.

It seems that I never run out of things to write about. While I have those storehouses, I don’t often need them because when I find time to write I always have another topic to write on. Sometimes two or three.

It is like I am storing them up in case I hit a dry spell.

And then I’m reminded of the story of manna in the desert. God provided food for the Israelites in the form of manna. Yet he provided only enough for one day, except right before the Sabbath, where he would provide enough for two days. Every day they were to gather up just enough for that day. Every day after the gathering time the rest would disappear. They had to trust that God would provide for them the next day, and the next day, and the next day.

If they gathered up more than they could use for the day, they got sick.

So by saving up all these ideas, am I hoarding? Am I not trusting in God’s providence? Or am I being a good steward of what I am given, by keeping it for later?

Anne Lamott says to keep a notebook at all times, and write down any and all ideas. She jokes that if you don’t, she will, and she’ll get the idea and make money off of it. She also says that by keeping a notebook you are letting the Universe know that you are open to ideas and are a good place to send them too. I certainly can attest to the truth of that. The more I keep a notebook, the more writing ideas come to me.

I don’t always use them, but when I do, I’m grateful. Sometimes, just keeping a notebook helps me stay focused. Sometimes an idea will just not stay quiet until I write it down. I tell it that “I’ll get to you later” by writing it down. Sometimes I’ll use the idea in a post with a few other ideas and not even know I’ve already jotted it down in my notebook earlier. That is OK too. Better to have it in two places than none.

Yoga in the morning.

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I’m rethinking my idea of yoga. I think it is better to do it every day, rather than just once a week at a class. I also think it is better for me to do it first thing in my morning routine rather than at the end.

I hear it is best to do yoga before having breakfast. This would certainly take care of my need to get my morning started but not be in the way of my husband. Our day overlaps by about thirty minutes and if I go into the kitchen where he is it is a little chaotic. I’ve discovered that it is best for both of us if I don’t try to start my morning in the same place where he is trying to finish his.

As an alternative, I’ve been bringing my Kindle into the bedroom to write during that time, and while I may still do some of that, I think that doing yoga then would be good too.

I’d been leaving yoga for the end, just after my shower. Somehow I was running out of time and I was either rushing through the poses or just skipping them entirely. So that isn’t working. When I had been making time to do it I’d also been doing an example of “Praying in Color” and that was good too. In the past several months if I’d done either they were done as a sort of afterthought.

If I do them first, they are done. No excuses.

I like how I feel during the day if I’ve done a little yoga. Things seem to go better. I’ve actually found myself sort of checking in with myself. Did I write? Yes. Did I do yoga? Yes. It is like taking a multivitamin for my soul. If I’ve done it, I feel better.

Now, do I feel better because I’ve done yoga, or because I’ve done something I feel is good for me? I don’t know. This has long been something I’ve wondered about. Is it the activity that matters or the commitment and discipline that matters? Sometimes I think what helps me the most is intentionally living my life, rather than just drifting aimlessly through it.

This is part of why I write. Writing keeps me awake. Writing means I face things, rather than running away from them. Writing means I don’t hide behind the unknowing, behind the questions. When I write, I dig, and when I dig, I learn. I start to uncover, and recover, the truth, and with it, myself.

Writing is yoga too, like that. Yoga isn’t just poses. Yoga is a way of thinking. Yoga is sticking with it and working through it. Yoga is leaning in and being patient. Yoga is trying. Yoga is sometimes just showing up, bored and tired, but there anyway. Yoga is finding the center calm. Yoga is better lived off the mat. Yoga is being awake in the moment.

So why wouldn’t I do this every day? Why wouldn’t everybody?

On predictive text poems.

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Nothing amuses me more than my predictive text poems. They are meaningless fluff, and yet they are fun to write. My Kindle almost writes them for me. I’m a little disheartened that they seem to get more “likes” than the stuff I pour my heart and soul into though.

Maybe people see more into them than I do. However, maybe they don’t get it either, and they think because they don’t get it, it must be “art”. Not really. Just because you don’t get it doesn’t make it art. It might just be odd.

Sometimes when I feel that I need more followers, I’ll make a predictive text poem. It is amazing how this works. Is it something about WordPress that attracts poetry lovers? Or is this true for the blogging world in general?

Perhaps there is a ghost in the machine. When I do predictive text poems, they sometimes reveal a hidden truth. It is like doodling and then seeing a pattern. Sometimes (often) something comes out that I didn’t mean to come out, and it is pretty surprising. Sometimes it just seems interesting enough that it is worth looking at a few times.

I’ve discovered another way of using the predictive text feature on my Kindle as well. When I’m writing a regular piece, it will offer words that are pretty amazing together. I’ve started to write them down, and I’ll use them later. It is kind of like fishing, and instead of reeling in a catfish, I find a diamond ring. While the catfish was what I was looking for because I was hungry, the diamond ring is nice too. It doesn’t fulfill my needs at the time, but I can save it. I do have to be aware of getting distracted from my train of thought while I do this though.

New commitment

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I keep saving off Bible verses that I like and want to write about. I rarely write about them though. Sometimes I do, but not nearly as often as I write about other things.

I think there is a connection with this and painting. I have a lot of painting supplies. I rarely paint. I want to, but then I don’t. I don’t in part because I don’t want to mess it up. There isn’t a cut and paste feature on painting when you are doing it for real. Digital is another matter. But putting actual paint on an actual canvas is pretty scary sometimes. I don’t want to waste it. I don’t want to do it wrong.

Analyzing the Bible is the same. This is little me, non Bible scholar me, giving my viewpoint. Who am I to say that this section means this? Who am I to pull these different sections together and point out a connection between them?

Then I also think that I don’t want to alienate people. Not everybody likes to read about the Bible. A lot of people are turned off by religion because of religious people. Too many people have tried to cram the Bible down their throat rather than to offer it as the nourishing food that it is.

Then I see between the lines. I’m trying to talk myself out of this. And then I remember the Jewish concept of the yetzer hara. It isn’t me trying to talk me out of this. It is this force outside of me trying to masquerade as me to get me to not do this.

It sounds a bit crazy. It sounds a bit like hearing voices. It sounds a bit like arguing with myself, and we all know that is a bad sign.

But it is a real concept, and it is really useful to know. It is like having a road map to your mind and finally learning where the dead ends are. Don’t drive over here, you’ll get lost.

So I’m using it as a slingshot. I’m seeing this pushback or inertia or fear as a sign that this actually is something I should do, in fact it is something I must do.

It is kind of like aikido, or at least I think it is. At least it is what I think aikido is about. Use your opponent’s energy against him.

So I’m going to commit to making at least one of my posts a week a musing on a particular Bible verse or section. I was going to say three posts, but then I think that is the yetzer hara doing its evil magic as well. If I commit to three and then have a hard time doing it, I’m likely to give up altogether.

It is just like committing to exercise. If you start exercising and you say you’ll go to the gym every day, you’ll likely get sore and tired and worn out. You’ll get discouraged if you try too much all at once. Best to start out small and warm up to it.

I did the same thing with my blog. I committed at first to posting at least three times a week, with the hidden goal of once a day. I now post as much as four times a day, and that is partly because I’ve found “dead” time to work and how to write using my phone and my Kindle.

It is precisely because of how I’m able to write this often is why I shouldn’t commit to three posts of Bible study a week. I need to do those kinds of posts at a computer so I can cut and paste specific references. I don’t always have time to sit at a computer to do that.

Or, am I making up yet another “rule” of how I should do this? Yet another yetzer hara trick. It will tell you that if you can’t do it perfectly, don’t do it at all. The way around that one is to know that doing even a little of a good deed is better than doing nothing.

So, wish me luck, and I hope you find some good out of my insights that will follow. Pray that I am able to hear and interpret God’s Word wisely, so that we all might be uplifted.

Audience

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Who is my audience? Who reads this? Who “gets” what I write? And does it affect what and how I write?
I am my first audience. I write to understand things. Writing helps me to clear my head. Writing is how I define myself – it is how I understand what I’m thinking, and it is a descriptive. I write in order to be me. But I don’t write about the same things all the time. I write poetry, “progressive” Christian commentary, what it is like to be an adult survivor of an abusive family, Bible study, and political pieces about modern culture and what it is like to be female. That is a pretty broad range, and there aren’t that many people that will like each thing. I write about whatever comes to my mind that I want to understand. I also write about things that I think are helpful to others, things that may give them a signpost in an often confusing world.
I feel that sometimes I have something really important to say. Sometimes I feel like I want to shout from the rooftops – hey – look at this, here’s a connection that has just come to me and it will make so many lives easier! I sometimes don’t feel like they are my words. I feel like I’ve found a treasure rather than created one. Writing is like that sometimes. It isn’t always a process of creation but discovery. Sometimes these discoveries are pretty amazing.
My audience is small. It is highly unlikely that the right person will get this information. My audience is varied – all over the world. I look at the profiles of every person who “follows” my blog. I give thanks for each person who has decided that what I have written is worthwhile enough to want to read it on a regular basis. I keep a list of every person that I personally have sold a book to for the same reason.
I don’t feel that what I write is “mine”. I feel that I am a receptacle. I feel that I am a channel. I feel that God uses me (and everyone else) to reveal things. Sometimes I’m not very good with conveying the information. That is why I write every day. I want to get better. Writing is just like any other exercise. You have to do it a lot to get good at it. What is the point of having information if you can’t convey it to others in a way they can understand it?
But I think that is part of faith and trust. I think that if God wants this information to get to others, God will make it happen. I think writing a blog is a great idea. You can write a book, but then you are dependent on a publisher accepting it and then printing it and then distributing it. You have to rely on people being able to get to a bookstore and being able to afford it, or having a library nearby. With a blog, whatever you produce is right there, available, no waiting, to anyone with an Internet connection.
Admittedly, that isn’t everyone. Not everyone has electricity. Not everyone has the infrastructure to have high-speed Internet. Not every government is OK with the free exchange of ideas. Just looking at the map of who has read my blog reminds me of this.
But I think that part of all of this is that I just have to do my part. I have to show up, and receive what I can, and offer it forth in the best way I can, and let it go. Just like casting bread upon the water I have to trust that it will get to where it needs to go.
Would it help if I had more followers? Would that encourage me, or hinder me? Would I get bolder, or more hesitant? Would it help if more people “liked” my posts? Would that mean I’d write more things like that, or less? Would it help if I posted some of my posts on larger sites? Would that change my audience, and then change how and what I wrote?
I think it is best to just write, a not worry about it. I don’t make any money on writing a blog, and in a way I think that keeps me honest. Nobody can “buy” my words. I don’t have to change what I write to suit anybody. While it would be nice to get a little money from this, I feel that isn’t fair in a way. I feel that I get the information for free, so I should give it out for free. But then, there is the time I take to write it – isn’t that worth something? But that too, was given to me by God.
Not everything I write is divinely inspired. Some of it just is rambling and wondering out loud. Perhaps it sounds strange to say that I feel that God inspires some of what I write. But to me it sounds humble – it is giving credit where credit is due. To take the credit for a connection that came to me out of the blue is to lie, in my opinion. I’m sure that some people will think it is vain to say that God inspires me (and others – I’m not alone) but to me it is the exact opposite.
I write all the time. I write every morning. I write while I’m walking at lunch. I write while I’m waiting in doctor’s offices. I write while I’m going somewhere if I’m the passenger. (Long road trips are great). I write if I’m on retreat. I write at work when it is a quiet time and I’m caught up. I keep a notepad with me all the time for ideas.
I pray to be a worthy receptacle, and that God is able to help people through me. I pray that I can help encourage others through my words, and to open doors for them to shed light on confusing ideas. I pray that I can let them know that they aren’t alone in their struggles, and to keep on working on it and through it.

Goal

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I started my blog 12-29-12. I started writing “notes” on Facebook in February, 2012. They were the precursor to my blog. They were a way to get out ideas and share them with a (hopefully) friendly audience. I’d planned on staying with that way of posting my thoughts and then a couple of things happened.

Facebook changed again and made it harder to find the “notes”. And I discovered that I wanted to share certain posts with people who weren’t my “friends” on Facebook. It was either get them to be “friends” or open up my posts to the web. It seemed that starting a blog was the best answer. I was surprised when strangers started reading my blog, and started subscribing to it.

I am grateful for every person who subscribes, and I look at the profile of each one. I know that some will subscribe for one thing and then I’ll post something entirely different. I know that I can’t be everything to everyone. Some subscribe after I post a poem, some after I post a word of encouragement. Then I’ll post something about my abusive childhood and I’m sure it is hard to read. It is hard to write, but it is healing. Recently I’ve figured out how to create posts with a lot of pictures so I can have a little scrapbook of adventures I’ve gone on and things I’ve seen. I’m sure that some people want my posts to be the same as what they originally read.

The fact is that the blog isn’t for them, really. It is for me. It is nice if other people want to read along, but I’m not going to create it any one particular way for any one particular audience. It is an organic, evolving thing. There are repeating themes, certainly, but if it were the same all the time that would be a waste of my time.

I like to be surprised by life. I’m the kind of person that wonders why people read the same books over and over again. There are some books where it really is the same story but just different character names and different cities. I guess some people like the familiarity of it all. Perhaps it makes them feel safe.

That bores me. A lot. Sure, I like some things to stay the same, and in many ways I hate change. But I also like to learn new things and stretch my boundaries and experiences.

As of today, I have 480 posts. Currently I have 159 followers. I average about 20 visitors a day, and each one looks at an average of two things. There have been over 14,000 views of my posts. One particular one has been read over 5,000 times, and still is getting noticed. I’m constantly surprised at what people are finding and rereading.

I have a goal of having 500 posts by the time of my anniversary of creating this blog, and that seems really easy. I had thought that I started it sooner, but I have over a month before I get to that date. At the rate I’m going, I’ll be over it by then. I didn’t have a goal of any amount at all when I started. My goal when I stated was just to have a blog.

I’d started with the idea of posting at least three times a week. Ideally, I wanted to post at least once a day. I started small so I wouldn’t get overwhelmed. I know that if I put a huge goal in front of me I may never get there. If I break it up into manageable pieces I’m more likely to do it. I now post an average of two things a day, sometimes four or five.

I’ve learned how to write all the time. I’ve learned that I don’t have to have an hour to sit down and write. I can write a little something while I’m walking at lunch. I can write while waiting at a doctor’s office. I can write while I’m in line at the post office. My phone and my Kindle are both great tools, and I have a running list of idea “seeds” to pick from. Writing used to be all about handwriting, and it took a while to get used to the idea of typing it instead. It has changed how I write, certainly, but it means that I can post more. Is it better? Time will tell. Perhaps one day I’ll get an assistant who will type up my handwriting and I can go back to doing that.

I’d planned on writing at the computer every morning. Now, it is more often that I type up an idea during the day and I’ll email it to myself. Then I’ll edit it and post it in the morning. This seems to work better for me. It is hard to get away from the creative flow and snap back into the mundane nature of getting ready go to work. There is nothing more jarring that having to switch gears. Somehow this new way of doing it means I’m able to produce more posts.

I’m really proud of some of them. There are some posts that I think I was able to really get my idea across. Some posts I don’t even feel are mine. It is as if an idea came to me and I’m just passing it along. Those are the ones that I’m most amazed by, because the idea is so surprising to me.

Some posts are very personal and intimate. In some I’m working out my own salvation. In some I’m working my way out of my own holes. In some I come to an understanding that is very healing to me. In some I’m sharing my pain to let others know that they aren’t alone and there is hope.

I don’t really expect anybody to read my blog. I need to write it, though. Writing every day is keeping me awake. It is like a date with myself, where I’m honest with myself about where I’ve been and where I am, and where I want to go.

Thank you for being along for the journey.