Why Did I Start Blogging?
I was asked that question this morning, and now I’m
stuck.
Why did I?
You other writers out there, don’t you sometime feel
that your voice doesn’t matter?
Who wants to read you anyway?
And why am I doing this?
When I was fresh out of high school, or maybe still in
high school, it was so long ago my memory has rusted; I took the Famous Artists
correspondence course. In the course someone spoke of “The Painter with the
Pen.” They were speaking of pen and ink drawings, and although I loved oil
painting, and even more water color, this painter with a pen idea stuck. That’s
what I wanted to be.
In college there were a slug of artists more skilled
than me—and taking biology I made more drawings of various microbes, cells, and plants than you could shake a stick at. I really didn’t care if I made drawings anymore.
Good thing I didn’t fancy myself as a writer then, but it was then I found I
liked writing papers. You figure.
It took me years to get a psychiatrist’s words out of
my head, “Writing is self-aggrandizement,” he said. With that statement he
wiped literature into an ego trip. And I suppose he could have said the same
about any other artistic endeavor.
And then there is that other fellow (Bulwer-Lytton
1839) who said, “The pen is mightier than
the sword.”
I think I’ll go with the second fellow.
Why do we write, paint, garden, make mud balls, beautify
our homes, play a musical instrument, sing, build, carve, sculpt, go fishing, do
calligraphy, write letters, cook fantastic meals, perfect our sport?
We are all artists at heart, we just need to find our venue.
So why am I blogging? I don’t know. It seemed like a
good idea at the time. I like to write. I wanted to reach out to people. I want
to make a difference.
When my second daughter was in the first grade I asked
myself what I wanted to be when I grew up.
“A writer,” I said. “If I had anything to write.”
But I began. I put words on a page…and blogging seemed
natural since I am a cryptic sort, who likes to make black splotches on paper.
You will never Find the Time—Make it
