This has become a problem.
I used to be a decent blogger with a small audience. Back then I just blogged. I didn't think about my audience much or about "content." I just blogged about my life, my emotions, and my relationships. I was shielded behind a screen name and so I had no fear about what I put out into the cyber-universe. If it entered my head, it hit my blog. I made quite a few relationships from that time with other women, and many of them I still keep in contact with today. (A shout out to my 3FC in Exile Girls! Woot! Woot!!) Back then I was rewarded with comments...even if a few did sting..."Did you really need to eat 600+ calories of dark chocolate!?!!" (No, LindaT, I didn't and you were right and I have not done that ever again. I learned my lesson.) The relationships fed my need to write, and so I wrote.
Somewhere along the way I became a planner, not a "doer." When I decided to take this writing thing a bit more seriously, all of the sudden my words ground to a halt. The fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants-writer in me was slowly replaced with a more careful, more adult, procrastinator who does way more planning than writing. My words now seem to come only in spurts and gushes and often at the most inopportune times-while I am away from my computer.
Part of the problem is I am no longer anonymous. To make a living writing...which I am not doing at this time...you are required to actually put yourself out there...your entire self. You know my name and can find me on Facebook and Instagram if you look hard enough. You will see my deepest darkest secrets and maybe even interpret some that aren't there. That's pretty scary stuff! The world is a dark, scary, and mean place and oftentimes I would rather just hide in a hole than to face the bitterness of it. I learned some hard lessons when Facebook arrived and all of the sudden I wasn't anonymous, but naively put my true self "out there." I was going through a rough patch and had more people (AKA "friends") talk behind my back than I can probably count. Of course some of that nonsense got back to me, and my "friend's list" got smaller because of it.
Nowadays, I hold my words a lot closer to my chest. (Though I doubt my Facebook friends would think so.) My words are an intimate part of me, and I am tender-hearted. My heart is easily broken and a snippet of something I say is a direct representation of myself in a minute moment...I have learned what I think and what I feel are constantly changing. I am a work in progress.
I am not sure how much I am willing to put out there for you, the "big bad world," to analyze and over analyze. I am not up to being beat up online by some pimply-ass loser who lives in his grandma's basement and hides behind his computer screen. I can hold my own online and have had to do it many times before, but is that what I want to do all day?...moderate comments and argue with hateful losers who want to pick my every flaw until they are huge, gaping wounds?
And yet...despite the risk...I feel this is something I need to do. Writing has always been a part of who I am, and a fear that someone may attack me online should not hold me back from pursuing what I want.
I am going to give this writing-from-my-heart-thing a definite try. I think I have something to say and even if it is of no importance to anyone other than myself... than that is okay.
