Reading your thoughtful, sincere replies to my questions last week has been so helpful to me as they’ve appeared one after another in my inbox and gathered here…helpful to others, as well, I know. When I last wrote, I wasn’t sure what I would be writing today, a week later. I hadn’t really considered giving up on blogging, but I was unsure about so much.
Between our conversation here, all I am learning from a survey I created for my Wisteria & Sunshine women, and the conversations at Sarah’s blog and at Susannah Conway’s …I am feeling renewed and hopeful.
Tho’ what really spilled me over into that place with some passion was the conversation on the radio that I’ve had on quietly in the background while I chose photos, cut out slips of paper and wrote your names upon them. It was a show on On Point about the verbal abuse many women online suffer, mostly through the conduit of Twitter, but in other ways, as well. And it made me grateful all over again for the wells of beauty and kindness, wisdom and feeling, that we women create who wander in a particular corner of these internet lands.
I feel more committed than ever to continuing on from my humble (but still so much the same) beginnings. These places apart from Instagram, FB, monetization and celebrity are important to keep alive. Our own patches to plant in our own ways.
When I reread my very first blog post, I remembered what it felt like to begin…entirely hopeful and exciting, with only the considerations of what it would mean to my family/work balance to weigh. Much has changed in ten years, and any online adventure is now barnacled with many negatives in addition to the positives. But you know, I feel it is the same with so much of life as I age and as our society gets more complicated.
So the answer seems to be the one I always come to when my home, my work, my health, or my days become cluttered and dingy…it is time to sort and let go, refine and refresh…find the ways to make whatever it is feel peaceful and inviting again. Some of the answers for blogging I am finding in your comments and in the quiet moments I try to leave open for the answers to come to my heart. I know that you can find your own answers in the same ways, and I hope that you do. The world needs us, if we can share in ways that feel nourishing and worthwhile.
I am learning through these posts and surveys and such, that when I am brave enough to ask for responses, I receive them….and that they will be enough to go on for a long while. My relationship to comments is shifting, I think, in a healthy way. I am going to trust more that you are out there listening and finding my words and photos of use and pleasure. Please use the little heart button when you have nothing to say in return (it really counts to me!)…leave a comment when you are moved to and it works for you…know that I always feel like I am finding a gift in that post-office-in-the-hedge when a comment appears, but they are not required…and that I, too, often find it hard to keep up and will usually only respond in my next post, or when a question is asked.
We must each find our own way, and it truly is more work than it used to be. But it is work I am called to, I suppose. So as I step into this eleventh year of blogging today, I do so with a happy heart and blowing a kiss to each of you.
xo
Laurie
…will be receiving the notes and collage kit…
Jan April 29, 2016 at 2:44 pm
Happy Blogging Anniversary Lesley.
sarah April 29, 2016 at 3:29 pm
Happy blogiversary! I’m glad you’ve found a comfortable place to stand. Your conversation on the subject was invaluable to me. I was surprised to come across the same conversation in a couple of other unrelated places – it seems like the question is doing the rounds of blogland at the moment, as it tends to do every three or four years. Perhaps even just the fact we’re questioning proves that there’s still health and hope in blogging.
mel April 29, 2016 at 6:27 pm
happy blogaversary! I’m glad you’ve found a place to rest in all of this….my corner of the interwebs is brighter knowing you’re in it. xo
Peggy April 29, 2016 at 10:46 pm
I will walk in this new year of “renewal blogging”, dear Lesley right beside you. xo
Gem May 5, 2016 at 10:39 am
Happy Blogging Anniversary. Blogging has changed so much over the years. There seems to be a huge decline in the so called hobby blog and comments are few and far between. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t blog for comments, but it is nice to receive them, just to know people are out there reading what you have to say. Life is busy and we don’t always have the time, but it only takes a couple of seconds.
I’m pleased to hear that you’re going to keep going with it all.
Here is to another ten years (and many more).
Love Gem x