As a Blogger in 2016

I started blogging back in 2006 for no other good reason than a friend was doing it and strongly urged me to do it. That’s often how I’ve discovered some really neat stuff.

I posted only a few pieces, got distracted and dropped off. I was to do this pattern for a few more years, trying all the main blogging sites, never knowing what I was writing or why, until 2009 I returned to WordPress and writing this blog. There have been interruptions, long ones, but I’ve continued to blog more or less regularly. I find that while I blog to market my books, a far stronger reason has become that I enjoy writing and interacting here.

When I look at it, my life has been a lot like this blog in these years–with long interruptions into it. What the blog provides is a place to write, no matter what is going on in my personal life. I am a writer, and a writer writes. If I do not write, I go, in my grandmother’s words, “haywireflooey.”

Now, I’ve know this. I come to it again and again, but still, when demands come on me, the first thing I set aside is my writing. I am changing that now. It is the blog that has helped me to change. Right now, as I tap away on the keyboard, my grandson is downstairs doing heaven knows what–I heard the standing lamp rattle. But I didn’t go to see. I’m writing, and fast because I’ve promised to go to the movie theater to see Alvin and the Chipmunks in one hour.

This blog gives me a space to carve out a few minutes of writing, when there is no way I’d make it into an extended, thoughtful project.  As a woman past sixty, helping to raise an 8-year-old boy and care for my elderly, now-mindless mother, I myself have no mind left at times.

Writing is my centering tool. It is how I make sense of myself and my life. But I do not intend my blogging as a journal. I journal each morning, pen and paper a must for me. But here on the blog I can write in the fashion that requires communication with other people. I am writing to be read, practicing such writing. I am striving to be real into the world.

For 2016, I’m asking myself some serious questions about living my life purposefully. Being in my senior years now (I like to think the youth of old age), I have far less years behind the cart than in front of it. I don’t want to waste any minute of those years on things that don’t matter to me. I am determined to enjoy my life.

When I asked myself what I wanted to do in 2016, I knew I wanted to keep blogging. But why? Time is my greatest struggle. Why put it here, when I so have book projects tugging at my heart?

Because I want to practice dedication to the craft of writing. I want to practice writing faster, and more honestly. I’ve read some of the most honest pieces on blogs. I want to communicate and build relationships, where I help others and others help me. I want to take part in the blogging world!

I’m going to show up, come rain or shine, at least once a week on this page. Despite making a strong attempt to schedule my life and other writing, I have decided not to make a schedule for the blog. I’m going to experiment here, and let my postings grow organically (sounds so artsy).

Blogging subjects will mainly be about writing and books, often about my life as a woman writer, and simply about life as I see it. Commentary! Something to learn there. All of it in the encouraging vein, because I find that is my greatest need. I want to share it, too.

Okay, darlings, barely 30 minutes left to slap on shoes and some makeup and get on with a lively 8 year old to the movie theater. I’m off, and I’ve written 693 words in just 45 minutes!

God bless!
CurtissAnn