Now What Do I Do?

I take a sharp breath. I feel a punch of fear just under my ribcage. I have just opened an email from someone in my life, a writer, who is my standard bearer for writing. “I’d like it to be time,” she writes, “that you begin your own blog.” In her opinion, I should be sharing my experiences and insights with others, not just her. She says it’s really simple to set up a blog and sends me a link to blogspot to demonstrate her point.

This is not the first time she has tossed similar words in my direction. The occasion now is that I have commented on a provocative blog entry that she has written about the idea of home. Although I have been brief, what I write makes it obvious that I have a lot more to say on the subject.

Setting up a blog is easy from a technical point of view. From the internal point of view, it is not so easy, at least for people like me who are both compulsive and intensely private. Almost every decision creates conflict, especially when I come face to face with the question of what to call it and whether to use my “real” name. I remember another conversation between us about writing. I had written, “I want to be heard but if I put myself out there, I risk being known. If I am known, can I still navigate this world and meet people’s gaze? Where are the boundaries? Will I survive the scrutiny? Writing is the easy part… it is the sharing that evokes incredible panic.” This, she did not understand. I tried to explain my anxiety around being heard (or not) and feeling invisible. She responded simply, “Courage.”

Whether it is courage or a moment of impulsive insanity that brought me here, I do not know. It’s not entirely clear to me what this blog will be about, but I expect that I will write about that which provokes and stimulates me. A lot of things do. Should I write something along the way that provokes you too, please comment. It would be nice if this blog became a community gathering place.