Barcelona: Day 75 : Blog Topic #39: How I Process Blogs and What I Do With All That Info

Starting a blog was probably one of the best things I could have ever done with my life. If you sit in complete and total silence, eyes closed, ignoring everything but the air that you're breathing, the ideas flow. For me, often things come when you're attempting to fall asleep. I'm sure you can relate -- you're in bed, ready to hit the hay, and yet your brain just came up with a million things it wants to mull over. These things go straight into my blog.


Blogs allow you to get things down on paper, and are not only a fantastic way to remember all the things that made you tick when you were younger, but God-willing I have kids, I think it'd be awesome to be able to show them. It's literally a window into the past. In some ways I suppose you could compare it sort of to a time capsule, but I think it means a lot more than that.

I used to never go back and read old posts. But when you write every day, and as new people find out that you write and potentially follow what you write, you get interested to go back and look at things. Recently I revisited a few real old posts from some of the first months when I started writing this blog. It's amazing the things that have gone on since then, and how much time has passed. It's simultaneously amazing that it feels like I wrote those posts yesterday. I feel like everything that I write is never truly erased from my mind -- just compacted and put into a file labeled 'blog topics.'

I started out telling myself that I was going to post every day, and even though I've missed days, and sometimes even gotten as far behind as 8 days, I've caught back up (as I'm doing now; funny how that works). The most motivating factor is that I like doing it. I like sharing thoughts, but more so because it's in a safe environment for me. I can spill whatever I want out here. I've not made this private or controlled or anything -- and even put the link on my Twitter, because I don't really care who reads it. I almost hope that there are random people that come across it and perhaps are touched in some way.

This makes me recall a person that I used to follow on Blogspot, who I believe no longer has an active account. It was a girl, and honestly I don't remember how I even found her. But there was one day she was feeling pretty helpless, sad, etc. I took a deep breath and began to pour out a pretty personal story as a comment. Within the next couple of days, I had a reply comment on one of my most recent posts. This is what it said:

"I can not muster up enough words to even begin to explain to you how amazing you are for commenting on my blog post & sharing your thoughts & experiences & that little piece of paper that you received. THANK YOU! Your kind words meant the world to me. Thank you for following."

This is the sort of thing that I'm talking about. It's one of the reasons I like this blog so much, and have kept up with it. After keeping track of my thoughts and experiences, if I can touch even just one person out there, I'll be satisfied. I'd love to believe that the world of bloggers and internet writers is a safe place; that we can all indulge in something that we truly love; the power of words and writing.

Whether it's your cup of tea or not, whether you post everyday and once a year, whether you even like writing at all, or just prefer to put up pictures and anecdotes and limericks, the blog is your place to do whatever you want. So have a go, yeah? Maybe it'll at the very least give you a place to put your thoughts down.


Oh, and just a quick fun fact, I save every comment that I ever receive on my posts; they come to my email -- I love going back and reading those, they're awfully nice. So to those of you that leave them on occasion (mainly you, Rissa) thanks.