WordPress has helpfully reminded me that I have a blog (with an email announcing it’s time to pay up for the privilege), thus shaming me into writing one of my rare posts. It’s funny, I write constantly, yet somehow this blog is seriously neglected. I recently completed a 134-page account of our fall trip to Austria and Prague and a shorter one about a holiday stay in Puerto Rico. I write these mostly for myself, to remember the trips, and reread them often, or refer to them to recall a special place or meal or memory. I also recently reorganized my crammed-full bookshelf of journals, which I’ve kept faithfully since 1984 (and fitfully before that), astonished to see the sheer volume of verbiage I’ve committed to paper in my lifetime.
But this blog gets short shrift, and I think I know why. Even though I’m anonymous and never direct anyone to my page, I still feel uncomfortably exposed here. It didn’t take long for me to realize this when I began my blog in 2008. I’d written since my teens, some professionally (freelance magazine articles), and thought I wanted to try again for a literary career, and at that time, blogs were getting noticed by editors. But I quickly saw that going public made me feel unbearably on display. That’s a crippling reaction for someone who wants to be a writer! And if you’re unable to reveal yourself, you find you don’t have much to say — or simply cannot bring yourself to say much.
I recently read Edmund White’s THE LOVES OF MY LIFE, and was dumbfounded by his naked honesty and complete ease with revealing his most intimate secrets. I admired his utter candor and learned from it, but knew that I could never do it.
I tried — after I wrote the paragraphs above, I tasked myself with finding SOMETHING honest and revealing about myself to commit to this blog. Several memories flitted through my head — leading on boys in my youth because it made me feel powerful; ill-advised uninhibited moments when intoxicated; losing my temper with a child, painfully regretted ever since — all things I repented, and see no profit in revisiting, for me or for you (if you’re out there!).
Do I have nothing like White’s joyful, audacious sex to reveal? Well, I do, but I guess I won’t or can’t. So if you’re out there, I’ll have another buttoned-up, unrevealing bulletin for you next year. See you then.
Tags: blog, blogging, life, mental-health, writing
Linnetontheleaf 
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