I think it was late 2006 after I had a complete hysterectomy that I discovered blogging. That wasn’t my intention. I’d gotten a new Mac for Christmas and had a couple of months of recovery ahead of me that involved little or no movement outside of easy home tasks. My brand new Mac sat next to me on a card table while I clicked through the morning television scheduling I wasn’t accustomed to watching. I had been working full time, or over time as a teacher, then school administrator, but had decided to resign after surgery. I thought surely, life would present something I’d missed along the way.
An early version of Pages with a template for journaling caught my eye one day and I settled in gingerly to begin writing. I remember thinking, Just write. Don’t worry about anything. You know. The voices. The voices that tell you that you can’t write, that you need to stay in your lane. The voices writer Ann Lamott calls radio station KFKD in her classic book on writing, Bird by Bird.
“Out of the right speaker in your inner ear will come the endless stream of self-aggrandizement, the recitation of one’s specialness, of how much more open and gifted and brilliant and knowing and misunderstood and humble one is. Out of the left speaker will be the rap songs of self-loathing, the lists of all the things one doesn’t do well, of all the mistakes one has made today and over an entire lifetime, the doubt, the assertion that everything that one touches turns to shit, that one doesn’t do relationships well… “
Perhaps you understand from personal experience. Or perhaps you don’t and now are wildly successful because you have never listened to radio station KFKD. I sincerely applaud you for this. Honestly.
It is with this mindset that I landed somewhere on the Internet and found a Blog. I’d never heard the term before but quickly found it was short for Web Log — a journal kept on line. Immediately, I was attracted. There were others I could have contact with — others like me. I wasn’t sure what that was at the time but learned it had to do with community. It may not have been called that at the time, but it felt exactly so to me.
I sampled Squarespace, WordPress, Blogger, and Typepad. After narrowing down my choices to two and creating two blogs (one is this) on two different platforms, eventually I became committed to WordPress. In time, I bought my domains and transferred my writing to the self-hosted format.
Eight million years have passed. Life has had not only its routine ups and downs, but true traumatic events — most of which I haven’t had the energy to record. As much as I’ve always felt the catharsis writing provides, sometimes I don’t feel well served by rehashing stressful events. Talk about them to someone? Absolutely. A family member, a friend, a professional. For me, at least, this is helpful. Write about them privately? It depends on whether I need to process my emotions. But publically? The desire is there at times, but I’ve got too much to consider.
Time passes. The need to write never leaves me. If I’m not actually writing, then while I’m weeding, or planting seeds in the basement in frigid March, or painting the ceiling in the upper hall, I’m writing. Sentences begin, a paragraph is constructed before too long. I nearly always quash the urge to memorize it and write it down, promising myself I’ll expand it later. Yet I don’t.
For the past few years I’ve used Notes, the simplistic grocery list making app found on an iPhone, iPad, iMac, iWhatever. There’s no audience, it just gets the job done. The rage is on the page for posterity, or for whenever I give myself permission to write something for the public. Right now, public consists of about two or three people. If I put a link on social media, I see there are a few looky-loos, but there appears to be no engagement.
I’m thinking this is perfectly fine because I have missed this view of a digital page I have grown to love over nearly 20 years. I don’t have to think about much other than keeping up with whatever blocks are; blocks are supposedly an easier way to format a post. They’re actually annoying considering they don’t seem to be as easy as the old format. But I see it as brain exercise, and I need that at my age. I need it because I do not want to become whomever my mother is right now: someone who calls me on a perfectly pleasant afternoon to tell me I have a fat ass and to say she doesn’t belong in Memory Care. But I know in less than five minutes she won’t remember the call. Unfortunately I will.
I hate the effect it has on me — the instant dissolving of what I tend to tell myself is strength or resolve. Resilience! She obliterates every bit of it sometimes during a call and sometimes later, after the Bulldog videos I watch wear off. I wonder if I can just sit in my car in the garage until I’m calm, or better, cease to care. Not caring is a difficult and uncharacteristic task for me.
I need to clarify caring and this is where writing for public consumption is problematic. Everyone has an opinion about sensitive issues. What I have experienced with my mother in my lifetime may be similar or completely different from others’ experience. What I say about my experience with my mother will most definitely get reactions from others and that is not what I’m after. I’m not after anything beyond writing truthfully about my life experiences and the effect they have had on me. How I’ve dealt with them. How they’ve changed me. What I’ve learned or haven’t learned from them.
That doesn’t make me a content creator. It makes me someone who writes a journal that is available for the public eye and that is all. The reason I know this is based on how I feel right now after writing all of what is above. The catharsis is alive and well, reducing the sting of the bite.
I was going to shovel dirt from the pile sitting in our driveway to fill the low spots in our yard. I also considered my obsession with pulling Dandelion weeds from our lawn, or finish painting the south facing garage windows. Writing won. Ultimately, I believe it is what helps me work through this awful problem. The other tasks would simply help me feel practical while not addressing what was bothering me — something I will never be able to fix.
So here I am, not quite as happily as I once was years ago, pecking on my WordPress interface. Should I care that this once promising at least to me space could become the Dementia Chronicles, or a new version of Mommy Dearest? Remember, I do care, but what often comes with that is more important: Does it matter?
No, it doesn’t. This Blog is for my mental health. It’s for me. I welcome you to read if you choose to, and to comment with what you think and feel in response to what I’ve written. If you’re anything like me, you search for others who know and are willing to share, or at least understand. If you are, then welcome. Don’t forget to buckle up. The ride is a bumpy one.
