Six days. That's how long it's been since I wrote here on this blog. It's the longest that I have gone without posting here in over a year.
Two weeks. That's how long it's been since I posted a piece at Yeah Write, my beloved writing competition, and the best blogging community around. I've skipped a week here and there if I felt like I was too busy to read all the posts for the week, but rarely two in a row.
And it was strange. Strange not to come here first thing in the morning and post something. Strange not to spend my Tuesdays and Thursdays reading and commenting on the challenge grid posts.
And it was illuminating. Because a little time away made me realize how much I depend on this place. This place where I write words and think thoughts and have friends that are every bit as real to me as the ones I see in person every day.
It's not that I haven't been writing. I have. For two weeks I have had words weaving their way through my head, pushing themselves towards my fingertips, aching to be released onto the screen. And I gave those words their due. I wrote and I wrote and I emptied my head of the thoughts and feelings that had been crowding up my life for a few weeks. And when I finished I felt better, stronger, blessedly empty of the worries and anxiety that had been dogging me lately as I went about my days.
But for the first time in a long time, when the arrow hovered over "publish," I paused. I went back and read over my words again. Moved the arrow to "save," and pressed that instead. Closed out of the blog. I could have written something else, or posted some of the pictures I've been taking lately, but I didn't, because at the time, everything I could possibly write seemed pedestrian, juvenile and infinitely less important than what I had already wrote.
There is a lesson here, of that I am sure. There is something bigger I am supposed to glean, to understand, from this time in my life. And it's coming to me. I'm almost there. I know that when the dust settles and I look back on this time I will look back with clarity. I won't see things through the haze of uncertainty that clouds my days. I will know things that I can't know now. I will smile at how the enormity of it all threatened to swamp me at the time when in retrospect, it was just a moment in time.
But until that day comes, I'll keep writing it, and pressing save.
Because some things are not meant for publishing. Not just yet.
You'll know when the time is right to publish what you're writing. And we'll all be here waiting when you're ready to share more.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to say you'll know when you're ready, but, honestly, I'm always apprehensive about pushing "publish." Ironically, those posts that I have been most apprehensive about are the ones that seem to resonate the most. Go figure. In any event, take your time. Give yourself some space. Even if you never publish them, the act of writing alone helps make that space for more understanding. Sending prayers and good thoughts...
ReplyDeletehuh, i thought i commented from my email..? does that not work? then many many comments went into the void of internet space. i'm going to have to investigate. anyway, i don't remember what i said, but it was brilliant. something about not everything be right to publish and growing with your blog and knowing that the things you do are right when you and can't remember now... but it's nice to day some time off. blogging is addictive and when you realize you don't have to post on a schedule but when you want to, it's kind of liberating..
ReplyDeleteI have some of this going on too. It's a time of shifting and changing. It's scary and exciting.
ReplyDeleteTrue. Sometimes, especially lately, I find myself saving instead of publishing. I think as a writer, this ebbs and flows.
ReplyDeleteAnd we've missed you at yeah write. :)