perhaps perhaps perhaps

I am not certain where my desire to share the little details of my life has gone off to, but it seems to have taken a permanent vacation. What a change from ten years ago, when I wrote a webjournal almost daily using bare-bones HTML out of an intense need to share myself with the world.

Is it just that I've become such a more private person now that I am so satisfied with the big picture of my life and so aware that the small details will work themselves out? Or is it that I have such excellent friends now that my desire to share myself is satisfied over afternoons at my favourite coffee shop, and the occasional evening in someone's living room with a cup of tea? Some of both, I think; I am certainly more private and less impelled to tell the world everything now that I realise that there are people in arm's reach who will be delighted to hear.

All of which is a complicated way of saying that I have more real connection with other people than I used to, and that I appreciate the interaction and engagement more than simple broadcasting. Oh, yes, I do realise that if I wrote here regularly I might have regular readers, and then there would be interaction and engagement -- but in a way that's part of why I'm reluctant to do so. I would worry about whether I was being read, and wonder who my readers were, and feel bad if I failed to update, and that -- all of that -- sounds so unpleasant, so much like added stress rather than spreading my wings in the world of the web.

So, you may ask -- at the very least I may ask myself six months from now -- why am I even writing this post? Well, I was playing around on Ravelry and through one link and another rediscovered Yarnstorm which is a lovely blog written by someone I might enjoy growing up to be. And there, gentle reader, is the gist of all this; I read someone else's description of their life, and I am inspired in tiny ways to change my own life, to make it more beautiful, more graceful, and above all, I suppose, to make myself more aware of the great beauty and grace that I already have. And in these moments of inspiration I think that it would be lovely to write my own blog, where I would describe all the joys (and no doubt some of the frustrations) of my life in such a way that I can see in my experience some of the qualities I find reading about the experiences of others. I frame my life through my own stories, and if I tell my life through my blog as a story of grace and kindness, understanding and real emotional connection, and turn my haphazard attempts to create warmth & beauty through knitting and cooking into a story other people can read, surely then I'll believe it all more myself?

That may seem disingenuous, but I do really mean it. I know that my own satisfaction with my life is to some extent based on how I understand it, and I think that my understanding is shaped by how I share it with other people. Couldn't I tell the story of my life here in a way that helps me be the person I really want to be, and to value the things I really want to value? Wouldn't it help me avoid being bogged down in the things which don't particularly matter?

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. But while I think all of this over, I must also go write a midterm about Freud as a writer and the influence of his psychological theories on literature. I anticipate one or two more posts here as the day (and the midterm) progresses, however, since my urge to write does also seem intimately connected to approaching academic deadlines.