A Blogger's Wisdom (not mine!)

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I heard from a fellow blogger the other day and she said something most eloquent. She is a writer as well as a blogger and had this to say:

"I've done a little copy editing here and there and really loved it, but I keep coming back to writing. I'm obsessed. It's like copy editing is the Nice Jewish Boy who'll treat me right and provide me with a respectable living, while writing is the hot, Latin lover who seduces me and then callously leaves me penniless. Sigh."

I loved her analogy. I also loved the reason she gave for why she started a personal blog:

"I started my personal blog because I couldn't afford therapy."

If you stop and think about your personal reasons for starting a blog, it might stem from that same reason, but might not have been a conscious thought in your decision. When you're telling us about aspects of your life, you are looking for the equivalent of listeners, or perhaps people who might give you confirmation that you seek, based on your words.

It's almost my first year blogiversary (next week, I'll have something posted on that), and as I review many of my posts, especially of the past six months, I've seen a pattern develop. In many ways it's not the best pattern, but I see it reflects me and an aspect of my personality that has been evident for years.

I have a tendency to reveal my weaknesses, my vices, the negative aspects of Pearl. But upon examining and suddenly being aware of the posts that reflect this, I realize that I do this for a reason. It's as if I'm hanging out a banner from my window saying, "THIS IS WHAT I'M ALL ABOUT. TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT." I seem to reveal myself, so that nobody can come back later and point out those bad qualities; it's a way of saying, "I told you upfront, so you cannot complain later."

Hey, I just revealed this great aspect of myself, didn't I? There I go again...

If that blogger uses her blog as a tool for therapy, I guess it's not a far cry to figure that my blog is used in a similar way. Whether I'm ranting, questioning, doing creative writing or the like.

This past week, in a correspondence with a long-distance friend, I was talking about poetry and how to set up a poem on a page, ie. whether each line should start with a capital letter or not. I quickly wrote a poem as an example:

She wandered in and out
of the rooms.
Seeking not what she knew,
but what she didn't.

She was lost.
It was dark.

Time to give up
the good fight.

The friend was rather amazed that I made up that poem on the spur of the moment...and her comment made me examine the words more closely. I realized that my subconscious must have been talking as I typed the words -- "the rooms" refers to different blogs I visit. I'm "lost" when I visit political blogs. But I'm not quite sure what "the good fight" refers to -- perhaps commenting on other blogs?

Whatever the poem means, it seemed to speak to me, just as blogging does. Blogging speaks to me; I speak to you. That's what a good therapist/patient relationship is all about. And yes, blogging by the hour is definitely cheaper than psychotherapy by the hour!