I just learned, via How to Save the World, today is World Blog Day, and I almost missed it. Figures.
I’m not sure what else I get done on all the days that I don’t blog, as opposed to days that I do. My day sometimes just speeds past and before I know it it’s over and I’m left attempting to assess where it went. That happens more during summer than in other seasons. My brain and sense of time become sluggish or warped when it’s warm out. I’m convinced, too, that blogging requires a different part of my brain than I’m accustomed to using. My thoughts can stay light or go deep, and I’m comfortable in both places, but expressing myself in a story or in hard facts, or even a personal journal (where I don’t even need to worry whether I understand, let alone whether anyone else does) turns out to be much different than the kind of writing I do here, clarifying my thoughts and ideas, or reviewing life events. Nevertheless, regular blogging is a good exercise. It’s like strengthening a muscle you rarely use, such as the one that bends your pinky when holding a teacup, or the one that lifts one eyebrow. It’s not necessary, but it’s a nice, sometimes elegant, ability to have. Besides, blogging helps me feel in touch during periods of writing isolation or silence.
Speaking of silence, Streams of Silence, by Bruce at Wordswimmer, takes a profound look at the silences we all face, particularly writers. An appropriate topic for me to ponder today.
Happy World Blog Day!
I enjoyed your idea of blogging as good exercise, like keeping a muscle in shape.
Of course, there’s always the danger that blogging may keep you from doing “more serious” work. But for most-for me, anyway-it can offer a way, as you suggest, of keeping in touch with others, especially during periods of isolation.
Blogging also lets a writer probe publicly, rather than in private, certain questions, and, with luck, learn what others may think about the same questions (or, perhaps, different ones).
At its best, it encourages thoughtful communication, a way of building on another writer’s insights and discoveries in order to make new discoveries of one’s own.
Anyway, glad you found “Streams of Silence” worthwhile. I’m grateful to you for taking the trouble to share the posting with your readers.
“clarifying my thoughts and ideas, or reviewing life events”
I think that is also a good description of much of what I do with my blog. I also think of my blogging as, sometimes, building miniatures. It is, at any rate, unlike other writing I do.
My Blog Day is going to involve leaving a few comments. There are so many great blogs, at some point you just have to say these I will read and no more.