New Beginning

New blog.

I did a blog before and it wasn't long before I decided to take it down. I wrote about moving from a city to a small town. I wrote about all the things I missed and all the things I didn't like in the new town and some things that I did. I wrote a lot about things that maybe weren't very nice to share with a general audience. Family, friends, trauma, congenital heart disease, vaccines, transitions, mental health, how bad most pizza tasted to me in my small town, parenting young children, Christianity, books, movies, gardening and for the most part--things like puppies and unicorns. My writing style could have been described as a completely unfiltered diary entry without any editing. I didn't call people names or try to be provocative, but I didn't pull back when other people would have thought that maybe it was too much. I got too personal. I revealed too much. I regret having caused people to feel embarrassed or even angry. I hurt myself, too. I bored a lot of other people--which is also unpleasant.

Writing has always been my favorite thing to do next to reading. I may not be the next Eudora Welty, Jumpha Lahiri or Hemingway. I'm more like a middle aged, odd-ball cousin from the less talented gene pool that people with that sort of genius sprang from. My insights are often muddled. My thoughts quickly turn into tangents. My grammar, spelling and punctuation are not ready for publication. I am not sitting here typing because I think that I have a gift that must be shared. I think I have a compulsion that can't be stopped. Once in a while, I have an idea and I share it and people laugh or they think it is clever. I feel a connection to others that I'm able to make through writing. That spark feels very good. I want to enjoy the release of that again. I recognize that I have to be more careful with what I write than I was before--but I can't continue to not write.  

It has been a few years since I wrote a blog entry that made some scientific points about vaccines but digressed toward a personal attack. I didn't name the person--but she felt that everyone in town read it and that everyone knew I was making fun of her. I didn't act with care for her at all. Some of my other posts were too revealing about past injuries and personal information that didn't need to go so far.

So where am I now? I have had my heart broken by things I wrote myself. I know what it feels like to have someone come to my door and cry and tell me in anger that what I wrote hurt her deeply. I will not forget how much that hurt me, how we both cried or how long it took me to stop looking at myself like I wasn't the person I wanted to be anymore. Doesn't matter if I still believe I was right in my thoughts. I was wrong in my delivery of the thoughts. It's true that I was provoked many times before I took out my words and used them as weapons--but that doesn't make what I did 'right'. It means now what it meant then--that I was frightened, angry, hurt, sleep deprived and lacking in direction and self-control. I won't do that again. I'm too old for that now.

I have learned some lessons. I want to try again. If you are reading this--I am really grateful. I don't know exactly where I am going with this--but I know I don't want to end up in the same place I did before. That's a little bit of direction. There is something in me that needs to get out and I don't know what it is or why it needs to come out. I will not let myself go the way that I did before--but I need to get whatever it is out. I trust that it is good. Otherwise, I would keep it to myself.

So meet the new blog. Not the same as the old blog. You won't be fooled again.