One of Those Overly Self-Indulgent Posts For Which I Apologize

Love leads me on, let's me say what I think. - Quiet Company

I've been asking myself lately if I should keep this blog online. I started this blog a few months before meeting my soon-to-be-ex husband about fourteen years ago, and this blog was our blog for most of its existence. 

I ask myself if blogging is something I can realistically even do anymore. Can I find time to write with my busy work/life balancing act?

Is it something that's even a good idea for me anymore? Now that I have a job that is somewhat in the spotlight, do I really want to share intimate details of my life with the internet like I used to when I was nobody to anybody?

Why do I blog at all, I've been asking myself? I've always had pretty much the same motivations since the day I started: to be a voice for those who don't have one (or haven't found it yet) and to be known.

To be known.

I wonder how many people have this insatiable desire to be known.

I know for a fact I care too much about what people think of me. I love to be loved - I just do. But if anyone is going to hate me, I want them to know me first.

I want to be known. Then love or hate as you will. But love or hate me, not a false impression of me.

I wrote my book, I write my blog, so people can judge me for who I am, not who they imagine I am. I must take some of the fun out of getting to know me personally, when all it takes is a Google search, but I need this. Some weird, messed up, narcissistic part of me needs this venue to share myself. Sometimes it's because I know sharing myself is also sharing others' selves and taking the heat for it in the public eye while quietly comforting someone I will never know. This is a trade off that has always been acceptable to me. And then sometimes I need this just because I need to be acutely known. It's sometimes almost too self-indulgent, almost selfish, how deep my desire to be known is.

I have another reason for blogging. Writing is inside of me. If it doesn't get outside, I feel stale and suffocated. I could write privately to get this out of me, and often I do. I don't publish every thought and feeling I commit to paper. But put it to paper I must. Or I dry up. Or I rot. Sometimes not getting these intense emotions out of me feels like rain seeping in through a damaged roof tile. The water collects and stagnates, the ceiling bulges, the mold sets in. I either whither or wrinkle. I need a rain gutter.

Blogging is my rain gutter.

I considered shutting down my blog momentarily this past week. Maybe I don't want people knowing so much about me. Maybe it's foolish. Maybe it will be my demise - if I want to get dramatic about it. And at that moment last week, getting dramatic about it seemed logical.

But I don't think shutting down my blog is the right answer. I don't think hiding the real me is the way I want to live my life. I don't think muting my voice and thus silencing the not-aloneness that I know speaks to people I both know and will never know is something I could or should do.

As for being known... Being known is both frightening and freeing. Dare I let the fear shut out the freedom?

I've asked myself if I should keep my blog online, even though my writing time is limited and my online presence is more prominent.

I may be making entirely the wrong choice, but my gut says stay with it. So I'm going to stay with it.

"Love leads me on, let's me say what I think ... 

You say the truth sets you free, well, it calls to me."