Back in high school, I used to blog almost daily. Before the advent of MySpace, Facebook, and Xanga, I was one of those millennial teens on Blogger. I'd write about my frustrations with Calculus I, being the co-editor of the yearbook, and various experiences living in Germany as a child of an enlisted Airman. It was a space to share more personal thoughts with anonymous strangers around the globe, which probably was pretty wild for 17-year-old me to be doing at the time!
While I rarely shared personal details and almost never posted photos until I was in college, I wrote because I enjoyed sharing my thoughts, whether others connected with them or not. I wrote because there was joy in writing as an act unto itself, and not because I was concerned about what anyone would say or think, or that they'd tried to find me and stalk me! (Though, I did have some frequent visitors to my blog in college. But thankfully, none of them were problematic beyond trying to connect more than I was comfortable with at that point in my life.)
Ultimately, though, I wrote because it was fun, and it was a space to be creative, to process, and to think. My PhD advisor once said to me, "Writing is thinking, and revision is re-thinking," while I was in the throes of writing the last three chapters of my dissertation. Back then, I struggled with writing because I was in my head thinking about how to translate my ideas on the page. I was stymied by the what felt like the insurmountable weight of carrying a theoretical mountain of critical theory and legal analysis all on my back, and I couldn't seem to make heads or tails of which way to go with it.
But I held on to what he said as I continued my dissertation journey and, eventually, I finished it. (And, yeah, it took a while, but I managed to do it when I bucked up and sat down and just wrote away, because that's how you do a dissertation. You can't simply think it to the finish line!) Throughout that whole process, I remember reflecting on what he said back then, and I still do today.
Writing is thinking. It's expression, creativity, logic, whimsy, joy, and pain. It's about opening yourself up and spilling out the swirling thoughts on the canvas, splashing them around with your hands like a child. It's about seeing what those thoughts reveal once they're out there, splayed on the canvas in whatever shape, form, color, style, and design your head, heart, and mind collectively willed into existence.
Revision is re-thinking. It's taking a brush or pen and refining the edges of those splashy shapes, adding lines, and/or creating texture. It's about giving depth and dimension to the array of colors, negative space, and boundaries of the canvas. It is breathing a bit more life and vibrancy into the work so that when it is viewed from different angles, it reveals something different and maybe even inspires.
I think that gets to the heart of why writing is so precious and near and dear to my heart, and why it's been strangely hard to return to it in a more public way, like this blog and whatever else my writing becomes as I continue to see where it takes me. Writing, much like any other art, is about revealing parts of yourself, having the courage to do so, and reveling in the the array of feelings and emotions that come from being so intimately engaged with your work.
But you know, I wouldn't have it any other way.
As scary as it can feel to open yourself up to sharing more and more, I realize that it's fundamental to who we are as humans. We connect with others through stories. We share our knowledge and experiences to inform, inspire, enliven, persuade, and help others. We share because it is innately human.
While I don't know where my writing will go with this blog - as I'm leaning into it again and feeling out which formats (fiction or nonfiction), forms (prose, poetry, or something else), and styles (informal, personal, investigative, or more academic) I'll take on - I do know that the very act of writing this first entry in years has been a step closer toward what I want to do more of in my life at this time. I want to write. I want to think and re-think. I want to be caught in the interplay of thoughts and words, playfully and sometimes painstakingly creating my art for others to see. And through it, I think, I'll know that I am doing something more meaningful and more purposeful, wherever it all goes.