Day Twenty: Thankful for My Love of Writing

We're just a week away from Thanksgiving, and I'm getting very excited for a couple extra days off work.  Yesterday afternoon, I started to not feel so great and this morning I woke up and I can't breath through my nose and my head fills like it could explode from pressure at any minute.  I'm sure it's associated with allergies or the fact that Mother Nature is having some major mood swings and the weather keeps jumping around all over the place.  One minute it's 20 degrees outside, the next day it's almost 60.

Being that I'm not feeling so great, and I really just wanted to stay in bed this morning instead of getting up to write, I decided that today I am reminded of how thankful I am for my love of writing.  OK, technically typing, but you get what I mean, right?  More specifically, I'm thankful for this blog and that it's my refuge each and every day.

I wrote my very first blog post on March 25th, 2009, and honestly I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.  I heard about this thing called a "blog" and I wanted to try it out.  My only purpose for doing it was to record my weight loss efforts, because I had been told how important it was to log the experience of trying to lose weight.  Well, I will say that I'm so very thankful that I decided to start blogging, but after writing 1,581 blog posts, I've yet to see the success that's supposed to come to my weight loss through keeping a journal.

Over the course of the past four years, I've actually started about four different blogs.  But, no matter what I want to write about or whatever reason I have for trying to start over, I always end up right back here.  This is where I belong.  I'm not sure what I would do if something were to happen to this site.  It has become my refuge, my safe haven, and it's where I let out everything I have to say.

Blogging is not a hobby for me, it's therapy.  A therapist I can visit every single day, and it doesn't cost me a penny.  I can tell it all of my problems, share all of my excitement, and it will listen.  Occasionally I'll receive a response, or some form of positive encouragement, but for the most part I have a silent therapist that just lets me vent, share, and get everything out in the open.

My love of writing started at a very young age.  Journal writing, specifically.  I remember being as young as 8 or 9 and writing in a little, private, journal now and then.  Throughout my teen years, I was an avid journal writer, writing down all of my adventures and secrets.  Then, I discovered that my mom had read my journals, and my journal days were over for a very long time.  I felt betrayed and that my secrets weren't safe if I wrote them down, so I realized that I was better off just keeping them locked in my brain.

As I grew older, I found my love of journal writing again, once I knew that I didn't have to worry about a nosy mother going through my stuff.  And, for the record I will state right here that I absolutely believe that kids should be entitled to some form of privacy if they choose to write a journal.  Unless my kid runs away or was in some kind of serious danger, and the journal was the only lead I could use, you would never find me snooping around and reading what my kids write about if they choose to write in a journal.

Anyway, as I grew older, I found my love of writing again.  I started writing in a journal and keeping track of my daily goings on.  I still have a couple of my journals from the time shortly after Peanut was born, and I plan on keeping them for her when she's older.

Once I discovered the world of blogging, my handwritten journal days were over.  I found it a lot easier to sit at the computer and type up everything that I had to say.  At first, I just focused on my weight loss efforts, because I really didn't want to share my personal life with the whole world.  Then, I realized how calming and therapeutic it was to write about my daily goings on.  I finally decided that if people were really that interested in what I had to say, then what difference did it make if I published my private thoughts on the World Wide Web?

What I didn't realize is the fact that so many people out there ARE interested in reading about my life.  Over the course of almost five years, I've racked up 201 followers and have had 218,475 hits to my blog.  For someone that just writes about every day stuff, I consider that to be pretty darned impressive.

Since I left the weight loss blogging world, the traffic to my blog has slowed down quite a bit.  I no longer receive near as many comments or emails from readers.  But, that's OK.  I have said it time and time again:  I don't write for other people. I write for myself.  It doesn't really matter to me if anybody reads my blog.  I'm glad that people do, and I feel honored that they choose to spend a few minutes reading what I have to say, but at the end of the day this blog is just my way of letting off some steam and saying whatever it is I want to get off my chest.

There are some setbacks that come from having a public blog.  Even though I'm pretty open and honest about whatever it is I want to talk about, I have to be very careful, sometimes, about what I write about or how I say it.  It doesn't matter that this is my personal blog, I have to sometimes censor myself and what I'd really like to say about certain topics.  That can be hard, sometimes, but I have learned to accept it and try and keep myself out of muddy waters.  I truly believe that everyone is entitled to an opinion on everything, but I just have to be careful how I word my opinions.  HA!

Anyway, today I'm thankful that I love writing and my blog.  My writing has always been there for me, and I know that I can turn to writing whenever I need to destress, get something off my chest, or just share whatever's on my mind.  It's amazing how therapeutic writing can be, and I'm so thankful for the thousands of dollars in therapy that it's saved me.

Now I must get ready for work.  It's our final weigh in for the weight loss challenge today, so I'm sure I'll be writing about that tomorrow.

Have a great Thursday, everyone!!