On the Health of Blogging

Somebody showed me a really compelling blog today about how/why some bloggers can be so thoroughly honest in their blogs. It touched me, and it made a lot of sense, so I am reposting it here.

http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2009/07/21/how-to-decide-how-much-to-tell-about-yourself-on-your-blog/

I think the thing I identify with here is that THIS blog, is meant to help folks with invisible illnesses deal with the ugly stuff that can happen to them, physically, with their families, with their lives. It's therapy for me to write honestly about these things as they happen to me, just like it's therapy for someone who is having something similar happen to them see that it's happening to others, and they are NOT alone.

The best part, writing about it gets it out of the system and works it out in the mind so you can see whatever it is more clearly.

As to the little things in life, like being honest that you're behind in bills and stressing out on that, or angry at your partner for something minor like not putting the cap on the toothpaste, it helps get it out so instead of becoming a fight it's dispersed.

I have been reading the Randy Pausch book, The Last Lecture. I don't know how many of you are familiar with that book, but it's written by a very brilliant and sweet man who was dying of pancreatic cancer, and decided he wanted his last lecture, given at Carnegie Mellon, to be a message to his kids about what was important to him to impart to them before he left this earth. Needless to say it's a tearjerker, but it is funny and joyful in other places, and deeply insightful. One of the things he talks about is that his wife Jai was told to enjoy her time with him more by not worrying about the little things they always bickered about, like Randy leaving his clothes on the floor. So instead, she'd go write in a journal about it and they'd be able to move on and enjoy their day.

When I was a teen, with a lot of troubles MY journal helped me a lot. I have 5 or 6 journals full of angst that preserved my sanity.  I think blogging is now a natural extension of that sort of catharsis and sorting of emotion, except that it's now shared so that others  get to see and feel those same things and see they are not alone. They are not an alien. There is someone to talk to, reach out to, or just relate to, who might understand.

Anyway, I had planned to write about epiphanies this week, but this article above inspired me, so this is what you all got. ;)

Maybe you'll hear more from me this weekend. At any rate, enjoy the last few days of 2011, and may 2012 be better for EVERYONE!