Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Keep Writing

I follow quite a few blogs. Some people write every day or nearly so and I think that's great. Most of us are really busy and we do good to write once a week. That's okay too because it makes us better writers. We write about what is really important. We take a little more care in blogging so that it can be interesting and entertaining.

Some bloggers disappear for months. This saddens and worries me. I miss you. I wonder what happened to you. I worry that life may have become too depressing or too hard. You probably think I don't want to hear about your struggle. You don't want to write about the latest round of meds, the newest batch of bills, another throw together meal, or yet another failed project.

But I do want to read these things because I live them just like you do. I get medicine that doesn't exactly work like it is supposed to, things cost me more than I budgeted, that throw together meal actually turned out fairly well so maybe I can cook that from now on, and we must fail before we can succeed.

I don't want to hear about just the good things. Life isn't always good. Often, life sucks dishwater.

Over the years, I've made a series of stupid mistakes. I've backed myself into corners then felt that I had no choice. I've rushed head first before I had all the information. I've decided I wanted the very thing I could not have. I've struggled to turn things around, fight against the path laid out for me, then after much screaming, fighting, and uphill struggle, end up in pretty much the same place had I left well enough alone. Life might have been easier had I gone with the flow, but I wouldn't have learned anything about myself.

And if I had only posted the good things, my readers wouldn't have understood me. You wouldn't know how I got to the good things and you wouldn't know why it was good to me. I can tell you I have a good man now, but understanding how good is lost when you missed the story about the control freak, or the dreamer who denied reality, or the guys who weren't bad but didn't connect with me. There's a boring story about coming home daily and doing nothing. It's not a compelling story like the one where you search for love, get discouraged, nearly give up, then settled down contented with a person who just wants to be with you. The good parts get lost if there is nothing to contrast them with.

Post your struggles and trails, the good, the bad, and the really ugly. We all have a story. We love story, it is how we connect and understand. When we have no story to read we become lost and confused. Worse, we may become bored. In boredom every mundane detail weighs too heavy on the soul until nothing has any meaning.

5 comments:

Samantha Stephens said...

Wow! You are speaking to me today. I closed my blog for a couple months and went to find myself. I am not sure what I went looking for, maybe a perfect life? Perfect is highly overrated. Something has stirred in me, I feel the need to write post on my blog again. I set out this morning in search of a sign. Thanks for the affirmation.

FreeDragon said...

You're welcome! :)

Aine O'Brien said...

Funny you should write about this. I was just thinking about blog topics and styles. I too like to hear the stories of other's lives, the good, bad and ugly. I find that I mostly use my blog to promote my nicer or deeper thoughts, (sort of self therapy) but really what I want to do is tell the story of my life and my thoughts on that life. To be honest, I've read some blogs that are one continual whine/bitch session and (for me) that gets old and I feel like it's an energy invasion. So although the not so good stuff is fine as it's part of life, but I like to hear about the good stuff too!

FreeDragon said...

Oh I agree, things shouldn't be all bad. I used to read a Witch's blog that I first thought would be very relevant to me because she lived in my area and she taught at the university I attended. I thought it would be interesting to see if a local Witch practice differently from me or if we were affected by the same things. I stopped reading her because all she did was whine about how difficult her life had been. She was a rape victim and she wished bad things on the DAUGHTER of her rapist so that he know how she had suffered. I thought that was appalling because the daughter didn't do anything to her. Even when she had a positive post, it still ended on a negative note. The final straw was when she complained about a lack of Witches in her area. Excuse me, you are just too conceited to see us. Even when she wrote about Witches, she tended to look down on others. She often complained about the local Pagan group as being too 'young'. She never wrote about how she solved her problems, she just listed complaints. I couldn't read her, she made me depressed.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for writing this. I needed the reminder that it's ok to write even if it's not sunshine and lollipops. You're very right.