I was thinking this morning about why I’ve been posting less here on One Cobble, looking at my discernible behavior and trying to think on the reasons behind it. Some of it is definitely a lack of contemplative time. My life has filled up with tasks, commitments, and community connections. All of those things keep my brain very engaged with less time for thoughts to percolate. Yet I think the larger impact is the emphasis I’ve placed on community building in the past year. More of my thoughts are emerging in conversations and less in solitary writing. This makes me a little anxious because part of my brain believes that if I don’t pin words, thoughts, experiences down into writing they become lost. It isn’t true of course. Every conversation I have shapes who I am and who I am becoming whether I consciously remember the conversation or not. I don’t need to be a hoarder of my own experiences, making sure that every moment is pinned down and available for later access. Especially since the larger a hoard grows the less able I am to find anything in it. Unless I make some sort of an indexing system and I become a librarian of the hoard of my experiences. All of which sounds like a lot of work facing inward and backward.
Well that was a digression that almost feels like a story prompt. *Makes a note and returns to the blog post at hand*
I’m really loving the community building work. I love the instant feedback of it and the reciprocal nature of it. I strongly believe that building connections with other people is one of the best impulses humanity has. It is how we all thrive together. Yes it can also be how we injure each other or even destroy each other (I’ve ready the AITA reddit) but I only see people extricate themselves from toxic situations when they have some other connective thread to follow. The community I’m actively helping form right now is the one on our Discord server (which you can join here: https://discord.gg/XtTfJwcP The link will expire in 7 days, but if you come along later and would like an invite, use my contact page to ping me and I’ll get you a new link.) The Discord community is still finding its footing, but it has been a joy to interact with.
Another community that I’m actively building is the Writing Excuses Workshop and Retreat which sets sail on a cruise ship in September. There is a special magic in having a group of writers be literally all in the same boat. I have Covid worries about both of the big in-person events I’ll be doing later this year, but I also REALLY miss the community that I haven’t been able to see in person for years. I love being part of the structural work necessary to make this event happen. This year I’m the front line customer support person and I’ve really enjoyed digging in, finding answers, and solving problems.
In my efforts to write this post I’ve had multiple long conversations on Discord, a business meeting with Howard to discuss the priorities for today, three email exchanges, a scheduling conversation with one of my kids, and two googling distractions. …I think I might have figured out another reason I haven’t written as many blog posts. My life is rich and full of important / joyful things. I’ll take this existence over those emotional-processing-heavy first months of the pandemic. Even if it means fewer blog posts.
But I do want to do better about writing more blog posts.
You need to write a number of blogs that make you happy. Don’t give yourself a number that you must write. I have done the same as you and failed and then realized I will write blog posts when I can and not based on any timeline.