(image via weheartit)
Wow. Thank you all so much for all of your amazingly kind, constructive, thoughtful comments on my post regarding this blog. I was incredibly touched to hear from so many of you, and it was comforting to know I am not alone in those thoughts and feelings. I didn't intend for it to turn into a place for all of you to tell me how much you enjoy my writing or this blog, but many of you did just that, and I appreciate your unexpected compliments a lot. It's amazing to me to know I affect peoples' lives who I don't even know- it's humbling and also makes me feel quite responsible. And not in a bad, obligatory way at all.
Thank you. I took each comment to heart.
There is NO way I can imagine stopping blogging. I enjoy it way too much, and I believe it was my friend Jessica who said sometime on her blog about how it was the cheapest form of therapy there is. I have to agree. When I don't blog, when I don't get my thoughts out in some tangible form, I can feel them building up with no where to go. I think that my problem was that I was allowing things that I view as less important to take importance on this blog. And even if you couldn't see this as readers, I could feel it. If you know me personally, you know that I love clothing. I love handbags, shoes, all things girly. But by no means do those things DEFINE me. I began to feel uncomfortable when I felt like I was indeed defining myself by these things on this blog. I love outfit posts as much as the next person, but I feel most proud of this blog when I share stories, personal accounts, and all of the thoughts and feelings going on in my head. When I left Livejournal after almost eight years of documenting my life, I left behind a lot of thoughts, writings, and a huge creative outlet. Moving forward in this blog, I am going to try and focus more on those things. And sure, I will definitely still post photos of outfits or things of that nature, but I just want to be a bit more aware of making sure I am doing this for ME, and not just to put some cute outfit out there for the world to see for whatever reason. And I understand that blogs are inherently narcissistic in a way, but in the end, someone must click on a link to arrive here. Sure it's about me, but it's not like a social networking site where you see my information daily on a news feed. You must seek this place out to arrive here. When I arrived at this thought, it put a lot into perspective for me. I should absolutely continue writing for me, and as always, it doesn't matter what anyone thinks about it. I often fear that blogging is too "me me me," but that's really just worrying what people think, as hard as it is to admit. I'd love to think I don't care about that, and typically I truly feel that I don't, but through my apparent reluctance to appear a certain way, I came to the realization that some part of me felt insecure about how I was perceived. This in itself made me uncomfortable and in a way, I blamed the blog for bringing those negative feelings into my mind. I never think things like that, I go about my business, and my typical attitude is "take me or leave me, but I am me" ...but somewhere along the line I must have conjured up some imaginary jury sitting there saying how ridiculous this all was, how self-centered, etc. And like in real life, we all do have people who judge us and think whatever they please. But I don't have to worry about that, or waste any of my positive energy on those thoughts. Like I said above, someone must arrive here, seek me out, to read what I say. Because of that, if someone wants to read it, it is their choice, I'm not forcing some narcissistic slew of myself on anyone. There is no need to feel insecure. My life is changing at a rapid rate, in an amazing way, and with this change I've been thinking a lot about my life, and I'm sure that's where this initial internal dialogue came from. With that comes the subject of feeling an invasion of privacy through this space on the internet. I realized that that emotion wasn't completely about this blog, but it was my overall accessibility online. I have a public blog, a public Twitter, public Flickr, and a Facebook where I accepted all blog readers' friend requests. Last night I went through and deleted any people from Facebook who weren't my "real life" friends, and I felt immediately better. Because I do make my life public, I need to have some level of privacy, and once I did that, this blog wasn't a worry to me at all. Blogs should be a public thing, but in my opinion, having an open Facebook was too far and made me uncomfortable.
So yes, I am absolutely going to continue blogging here. I would miss it way too much, and I know I would deeply regret not continuing this documentation I began in 1999. I love that my children will one day be able to read this, and I relish being able to skim over years of my life on this screen. I'm sure to the naked eye not much will change as far as overall content, but to me, my thought process has made a world of difference.
Thank you SO much again, each and every one of you for being a part of my life via this blog. And thanks for listening to this long ramble of an entry. Rereading it, it makes sense to me, and I hope it made some sort of sense to you, too.
Have a wonderful night!
All my love. :)