Sunday, January 5, 2014

Wrapped Up in Times New Roman


Starting this blog was definitely not something I just picked up and decided to do.  To be honest, I’ve been toying with the idea for probably a year now.  But every time I would think about starting it, something would stop me.  My insecurities – who cares what I have to say anyway?  My own fear – what if no one likes what I write?  My lack of confidence – what if I make unforgivable grammatical errors?  (Yes, I worry about making grammatical mistakes.  And yes, they’re going to happen. Apologies in advance.)  While I had a plethora of other excuses it all boiled down to one fact…

That to write is to be vulnerable.  Every blog post, poem, or story that is written has a part of the writer attached.  It’s like slicing out a tiny piece of our heart, wrapping it in ink, paper, and Times New Roman, and then sending it out into the world.  And as we are handing that piece of paper to the editor, or pressing the “publish” button on the Internet, all we can do is hope and pray that others won’t tear our work apart.  Because our writing is the only way that a stranger will be able to peer inside the walls and guards that we’ve placed and see us for who we really are.  To see what makes us tick, what makes us cry, what makes us giggle like a five-year old on Christmas morning.  Frankly, we lay our emotions, dreams, and ourselves bare; out for the world to critique.  Our writing is part of us, and reading it is one of the most intimate ways you will ever get to know us as human beings.

So, while you’re reading, feel free to comment, to share, to critique.  But realize that before we hit “post”, we probably had to take five deep breaths.  We probably read over our work twenty plus times and obsessively scanned for errors.  We probably pleaded our closest friends to “pretty please look for mistakes".  So be kind.   We’re just as scared as the rest of the world.



***The photo is a pin on my Pinterest account.  I do not know who originally took the picture/made the caption.

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