Linnetontheleaf

I recently cleaned out a file on one of my computers which contained a number of personal items from my children’s younger years — among them, several invitations to theme birthday parties of which I have almost no memory. I brought up first one, then another, asking myself, ‘did we really have a Mean Girls birthday party? a  dinosaur party?’ It’s unsettling to have no recollection of these milestone family events!

I assert that I actually have a very good memory (my family is always astonished by the specific details I can dredge up about people, places and incidents in our past), but that there’s just too much to remember!  Even precious memories are constantly being crowded out by new events and information — like that scene in  Inside Out where workers weed out the old to make space for the new in long term memory.

The process is inevitable, but I wish I had better conscious control of it — instead of agonizing over that speeding ticket, the time my boss reamed me out, or the argument with my spouse, how much better it would be to savor recollections of those birthday parties!

I started this blog, oh so long ago now, with such high hopes! I’ve always written (both as employment and for pleasure) and hoped that blogging would open new doors for my work. But I was surprised to realize how vulnerable I felt exposing my life and feelings online. It made me question whether I was really a writer, if I wasn’t prepared to lay bare my personal secrets. Too distressed to continue, I eventually abandoned the project and resumed my hermit ways.
But helplessly, obsessively, I kept writing — it’s an addiction, a form of therapy, an outlet, a pastime, a friend. In my four decades of putting pen to paper and fingers to keys, I’ve amassed shelves full of journals, long accounts of family trips, essays, poems and song lyrics. I admit that I am powerless over the written word!
So I’m reviving this blog, with a more outward focus this time (since I found personal revelation so uncomfortable), in the hope of finding readers for the words I’m driven to write.