To Write (and Blog) Again

Six Months! I went six months without cracking open my writing journal. Six months without picking up my pen to write. And because objects at rest tend to stay at rest, I had a difficult time getting started again.

First it was busyness, then I felt I had nothing to say, and then it became fear. Even now as my pen connects with paper I'm not sure where this is going to go.

Way back when (really just a few years ago when all the cool kids started doing it) I called myself a writer. Not because it was something I've wanted to do since I was six years old, not because I was a great story teller, not because I had stacks and stacks of junior high and high school journals (although I have discovered a few diary attempts) but because writing helps me think, writing helps me process, writing calms my anxious thoughts.

So you can imagine how the last six months have been for me...

Writing is therapeutic so it's time for me to get back into it. 

This (me writing again) was only made possible by a Writing Practicum that I took in the spring semester, which included keeping a writing ideas journal (50 entries worth) and a month of the semester slipped by before I even started.

Do I want to be a writer? Or do I want to be a blogger? You can be a writer and not be a blogger, but can you be a blogger without being a writer?

I feel like I have too many questions and not enough answers...

What do I want to write about?

What should I write about?
What does God want me to write about?
Am I writing for myself? for God? for a targeted audience?

If I'm honest with myself I quit writing because it took too much effort and I wasn't willing to do the work. The whole idea of writing every day whether you feel like it or not just didn't appeal to me. But I'm learning in other areas that some times you have to do the work--whether it's exercise, eating right, creating art, writing... You have to do the work and the more you do the work, the more the desire comes.

So I'm giving it another try, this whole writing thing. Accountability is one of the only ways I get anything done, if any of my fine readers want to email me and nag me when the blog goes quiet again! 

I have to write... my sanity depends on it.