Thanks. I Needed That.

A few months back, I spotted a fellow blogger posing the question: "Do people really want to read personal posts?"


My first thought was: "I sure as hell hope so, because that's all I write about."


Curious, I clicked over to her site. While she has since built a thriving mommyblog, on that particular day she was new to it and full of questions. Suddenly I felt full of answers. I don't know how helpful my words were to her, but I do know that by the time I'd finished them, I'd helped someone. Me.


Back to now. I've been blocked lately, trying to figure out how to evolve this story of our lives along with the evolution of our lives. I thought about the words I wrote that day and tried to remember why they'd inspired me. But I couldn't. I tried to recreate the message and the mood. But I can't.


So, I went looking for those words. I found them and realized why I hadn't been able to improve on them. Because I can't.


So this time I'm keeping them here:

"Intrigued by your post title, I clicked over here from SITS.

My perspective: I'm a lifelong writer, stringing my own words together as soon as I learned I could. I worked hard to have one of the nation's top journalism schools give me a degree that has served me well. I've been lucky enough to have people pay me to string their words together for more than 20 years.

Still, I kept my best words inside, or, seen only by me, scribbled in too many journals to count.

A life-changing event last year gave me the impetus I needed to get those words out. What started as a daily chronicle on Facebook to keep family and friends informed of my husband's cancer treatment became a blog where I could say more than a FB status update would allow.

I promised myself I'd write in my voice, and write for me. I promised myself it didn't matter if people read it. I promised myself that even if I did want to be the next Heather Armstrong or Jen Lancaster, it didn't matter if I wasn't.

I promised myself I'd just keep writing. And I have. Sometimes sentimental, sometimes snarky. Sometimes about cancer advocacy, sometimes about cancer fears. Sometimes about love, sometimes about losing it.

But always about me, my life and my world. Because that's what I know.

And I do want to be as big as dooce™ and Jennsylvania™, and I do crave (more than I'd like to admit) the connections, the feedback — ahh, who am I kidding? — the pure, undiluted attention-high that comes from someone actually reading and responding to my words.

But I have to write like it doesn't matter. Because, now, I just have to write. And now, I have to figure out how to evolve from a cancer treatment story to life after it.

Thanks for this post. Thanks for reminding me of something I needed to remember. Be well."

So. That's it. 


I'll keep writing. And I hope you will continue reading. Thanks for hanging around this long.