I started blogging in 2002, tentatively at first, and then with increasing enthusiasm. There was something very liberating about writing a blog, one that people read and commented on. A group of us bloggers met up, and became friends, and I still know almost all of them to this day.
But somewhere in the melee of work and life and Twitter and Facebook, blogging somewhat lost its shine. People don’t comment anymore. There’s no sense of community. But worse than that, it got easier and easier to put off actually writing a blog post. There was a time I’d have ideas cascading out of my head, bubbling up from some fountain of irrepressible need to communicate. Less so now.
Of course, 2002 was a long time ago, and I’m a different person now. My life is certainly very different – I’m far less underemployed, for one. I have more non-computer-based hobbies, for two. Fifteen years older, for three. I do still frequently think, “Oh, I should blog about that,” though the inspiration usually vanishes when I’m sitting in front of a computer.
But this year, I’ve been using my creative challenges to force myself to blog more. Indeed, I blogged more in January than I had in almost the entire previous three years. And I’ve blogged more this year than almost the entire previous five years. Even tonight, when I am feeling rather tired and not so keen on writing a blog post, something has come to mind.
I appear to have turned myself into a creative Ouroboros. The more I have created, the more I create, the more I will create. Deep down, I think I knew that this was how it worked but I was, for some as yet unfathomed reason, scared to allow myself to get into a creative cycle. Interestingly, it has turned out that it doesn’t matter what form my creativity takes, because pretty much everything I’ve done has fed the fire, and the outcome is that I feel more inclined to make the effort where before I would have turned away.
What’s also interesting is that my motivations are much more intrinsic than they used to be. I’m doing this because it’s giving me something back, it’s inspiring me to be creative in the one way that’s most important to me – I am once more writing fiction. And I’m enjoying the process of writing, rather than wishing that I had already written. It doesn’t matter so much that people aren’t reading this blog, aren’t commenting. A few friends will, and that’s fine. I don’t need a huge audience, I need no more the intrinsic satisfaction of having given voice to a thought.
Which is how it used to be. And how it ought to be.
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