Friday 12 September 2014

Life writes stories

I have neglected my blog, recently.

Well, it's not even so much that I have neglected it. To say that would suggest that I have somehow forgotten about it, that other things have taken up its space in my mind and those daily hours I have at my disposal for writing. And that's not what happened. I thought about my blog almost daily. But what happened was that I hit some sort of a wall, a large brick wall against which all ideas, all words and sentences and beginnings and ends, simply crashed into pieces. I ran out of ideas for my blog. Even worse, I ran out of confidence for my blog. Whatever idea did manage to appear in my mind, was immediately squashed by the thought of 'who would want to read about that'. Over the weeks (or months), this negative thought mutated into a fatalistic attitude of 'who would want to read anything about my life anyway, or about anything I might think or have to say about life in general'. Well, that may well be the case (although the stats of the blog say that it does have a certain readership - it is not big but it is not non existent either) but I started this blog for myself, and for myself I should continue. I started to write it in order to have a regular writing outlet, in order to process my thoughts about things and events, in order to leave a legacy for my children. None of those reasons have changed in the slightest.

Still, life IS all about change, and in this instance, what changed was me. My courage, my honesty, my ability to take risk. When you blog anonymously online, you can take certain liberties with the truth, you can create an identity designed to be liked, or disliked, to provoke or to entertain. But when you blog under your real and full name, you can't take any such liberties with the truth, but you have to make sure the truth is worth telling. If you have nothing but your real life and your real thoughts to offer, then they better be interesting, entertaining, or at least provoking. They better mean something to you, if not others. And this is where I ran out of steam. Day after day, my life seemed so ordinary to me. We spent a lazy summer. So did many other families. We had friends visit. So do many other people. We went on holiday. It wasn't somewhere unique like Mars. I had lovely moments with my children and also some tough moments with my children. Not exactly a novelty for anyone who has kids. I didn't feel that anything was happening to me, around me or inside me, that was really worth while sharing. That would offer a new perspective, a funny story, an interesting angle.

So here is where I come to that big word: commitment. Commitment is where we decide we will do something and then do it, stick with it, even when it's not going particularly good. Not sticking to it makes us look bad, if nothing else. Now, I may not mind looking bad in front of myself, but I definitely mind looking bad in front of my children. And the little readership that this blog does have. So here it is: I commit to writing this blog regularly from now on, I commit to finding those funny stories or those interesting angles even in the most mundane of days and weeks. Because, at the end of the day, that's what we all have in common. Not many amongst us have just had a holiday on the Moon, a trip under the rainbow, a rendezvous with aliens, an acceptance speech for Nobel prize, a meeting with a celebrity or a brush with death. But all of us - all of you - have stories to tell, stories that other people can learn from, be inspired from, receive comfort from.

With that in mind, I will keep writing. And I hope that you may keep reading.

2 comments: