The Fear of Blogging

My wife has been a blogger for almost a year now. She blogs as she (excuse me for a second while I turn off the spell checker for the word BLOG. My version of Word is so 20th century as it fails to recognize blog or any form of that now ubiquitous word on line.) As I was saying she blogs as she writes, sitting down and rattling off reams without much effort and in record time. But I’m not like that. For the most part, I labor over each word and thought. I agonize over exposing myself to the page. I don’t much care what others think so much anymore, but I think of my own reactions to what I have written. I can usually stomach what I have put on paper or the screen for the time being, but to look back at a previous day’s thoughts is often scary and at times discouraging. WHAT WAS I THINKING? Do I really grow that much from day to day as to make yesterday’s thoughts childish or irrelevant? NOT, as my kids used to say about 10 years ago.

So what’s my hang-up? Suzi has encouraged me to blog for some time now. She has kept it up and found it helpful, therapeutic, and informative for her family. And now she is talking about gathering with other bloggers in some sort of support and encouragement group. Should I become a part of that? We’ll see. It seems like a trivial thing to add to an overbooked schedule. But having just finished a book by Tony Campolo where he admonished folk (in the words of Carl Lundquist, NIKE, and the existentialists Campolo loves to quote) JUST DO IT!, I’m a little susceptible.