Taking the Leap
Getting Back Into Blogging
Something recently happened to me. What exactly is unimportant. What is important, though, is that it left me questioning and struggling with most aspects of my life. It also made me realise that I need to talk about stuff. I can’t keep it all bottled up inside me.
A few years ago, I started a blog where I would ramble about anything, and I literally mean anything. It was an outlet for both my anger and my joy, my fears, but also my hopes and dreams. As you might guess, that blog wasn’t very successful. It lacked a clear direction, so I abandoned it eventually.
Since then, I’ve tried rambling in other places like Medium, or at home with pen and paper in a diary style, but none of that really worked for me, so I gave up on the whole thing eventually. What I understand now is that I haven’t just left my blog behind, but also the only place where I could talk about stuff.
The thing is: What happened to me made me feel scared and alone. It made me realise that I don’t have anyone to talk to. I suck at talking to people. I don’t like letting them in, I’d rather maintain my strong facade. I’m not used to showing weakness.
I don’t know how to show weakness.
Most people get to know me as a positive and energetic young woman. Most people think I’m strong. Confident. Independent. Some of my dance students might think I’m a good role model. One of them called me Wonder Woman once.
The truth is: I’m not. I’m human, just like everybody else, and I have weaknesses, I have flaws. I’m not always strong. I have bad days, too, and more and more of them recently.
So when that thing happened, I felt entirely lost in my own sadness and anger. I had no idea what to do or whom to turn to. I was afraid of talking to my friends, afraid of what they might think or say. I don’t even know why, I mean that’s what you have friends for, right?
I guess it’s because I don’t have that many close friends, and the ones I do have are either far away or I don’t see them very often, or both. Also, I haven’t always been a very good friend and it felt selfish to confront my friends with my problems out of nothing. And as I said, I like to be “the strong one”. My friends aren’t even used to me having any problems in the first place.
Don’t get me wrong, I do have people I can talk to, and I do talk to them. But sometimes, I just need another outlet. And that’s where writing comes into play …
Writing Keeps Me Sane
Writing does several things at once: Firstly, it allows me to get all of my spiralling thoughts out of my mind and onto the page. Secondly, this forces me to get them into order and process them properly. Thirdly, it helps me understand myself better and makes self-reflection much easier. And last but not least, it makes me feel less alone because once I hit “publish”, people will know.
The weird thing about this is that I don’t have a problem with people I know reading the things I write. On the contrary: This is basically the easy way around having to tell people what’s going on.
Somehow, having the screen in front of me rather than people’s faces makes it easier for me to let them know. Because most of the times, the issue isn’t that I don’t want people to know, I just don’t want to tell them.
In fact, I’ve made some wonderful experiences with this in the past. Talking about these things publicly online triggers replies from people you know (if they see it at all), but also from strangers. Both of which can be quite magical:
A few of my friends have reached out to me after having read my blog posts, which was much less awkward for me because I felt they were talking to me about my problems because they wanted to and because they cared, not because I forced them into the situation.
On the other hand, I have become friends with a few people who have read my stuff online without really knowing me and somehow connected with it because they were going through a similar experience or knew someone who was.
Considering all this, I realise that writing directionless, rambly blog posts about my life is a necessity in order to keep myself sane. But this time, I will look at it with different eyes: This space has nothing to do with my aspired career in writing, it is not something I want to be successful with or make money out of.
I need this space to be personal. I need it to be random, rambly, and emotional. I need it to be real. I hope you don’t mind.