In which I attempt to address three lines of thought regarding blogging and not blogging.
My reasons for wanting to keep a blog were overwhelmingly less than revolutionary. A year and a half ago, I was moving to a new country. I wanted people to be wowed by my experience, I wanted to share something with those who weren't coming with me. It would be nothing other than a subtle update of what my life looked like. At best, I even dreamed that my work would serve as some inspiration to others. I fell in love with the Mount quickly and I hope that this showed in my early entries. It is a place worth writing about. Even more than that, it is a place worth experiencing. A place with stories that are meaningful, genuine, and funny. With such a task set before me, my blog entries could have taken a fairly predictable if entertaining and occasionally interesting path. I could have written about what it's like to live in England, or the places I've traveled outside of England. My entries could have showcased the great struggle my students go through on a daily basis, paired with my own internal and external struggles as I live and work beside them. I could have highlighted the fairly remarkable aspects of the therapeutic community in which I live, touching on the beauty of the environment and the importance of hands on work. I could have taken the reader through a year full of celebrating festivals that enrich the inner life and remind one of the divine spark that surrounds us. I have literally hundreds of anecdotes that would have served as brilliant reminders of the importance of simplicity, or love, or nature. My entires could have been peppered with heartfelt morals and quirky punchlines. But after a handful of well-meaning entries, I stopped. I didn't take up a single one of these threads. Which leads me to my second point.
People have asked me if I have a reason for stopping (and to be fair, many have not, after all many well-intentioned blogs evaporate and it's not that strange or earth shattering) and some people even provide an answer for why I have stopped - "You must be really busy". I appreciate the out. And I am really busy. But, not too busy to read novels or watch movies or drink the uh, occasional glass of wine. So, it's not really accurate to say I'm too busy to write. My reasons take on a different character:
1. I stopped wanting to share. Many things, both good and bad, I preferred to keep entirely to myself. I write daily but my interests in editing (more for toning down my temper or zeal than for grammar and usage mistakes) were mostly at zero. I became possessive about my life and felt smug about some things and ashamed about others. I lost the ability to sort out what could or should be shared and everything began to feel too personal.
2. I felt the need to put a positive spin on things that didn't feel positive. Who can write an entry that starts with "I'm sick of my students and I miss my family" if you're not prepared to end it with "But the students teach me so many good things that I realize how lucky I truly am."? I was in no way prepared to end my entries that way. I wanted every day to be a fable and the days instead often ended in nothing but questions.
3. I was bored of myself. Telling people about my life before I went to England was dashing. Telling about it as it first erupted before me in a flash of brilliance was dashing, "Look! Look at all these things I am seeing and doing and being". But telling about it as it became my life was boring me to death. I became much more interested in escaping my life during my free time than in retelling stories of the day.
4. My life is not a project. The Mount is not a project. And, I guess this is the big one. It felt like I started on the wrong foot with my writing. I structured it in such a way to fall in step exactly with what I now want so much to avoid. People speak of the things they and others do as "great experiences" and while there is nothing particularly offensive in this phrase, it makes me ears itch to hear it. It seems to take the thing you're doing out of the context of living your life. It is the same annoyance I have with the word "gap year". As if living in England is a tiny hole in a life filled with lots other things that are less void-like. Actually, life is seems pretty gappy in general. Gaps between stretches of happiness, gaps between meals, gaps between work and sleeping. Gaps between us and God and our families and our fears. Gaps we create, gaps we run from, gaps we hide in. To set aside something like living at the Mount as a gap in which I was supposed to garner experience in a way that I would compile, in writing, my thoughts on it became impossible.
But I'm writing now. I'm writing now to remind myself that my life is not boring or awful. It is not a project, or a series of anecdotes. But, it is an opportunity to reflect on things that are beautiful and things that are difficult. I'm writing because it's good to share. It's good to share our experiences, our hopes, our thoughts, and our pictures of cows.
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