Saturday, January 19, 2013

Cherished

Ok.  Technically, this is a "Five Minute Friday" post.  I realize I'm a day late, but I figure you'll forgive me.  After all, this is the first time I've actually followed through on the "I should blog about this" impulse since August.  Is blogging about blogging a faux pas?  I'm hoping you'll forgive me about that too.

The reason I finally made it through the entire blogging process (It varies, but often goes as follows: inspiration --> mull over an idea --> wrestle the right words out of my head and onto the page --> rearrange said words to be somewhat cohesive --> post and try not to check back too often to see if anyone commented) is because the "Five Minute Friday" was just too perfect for me.  I suppose I've already been free writing on it, but here it goes.  Five minutes.

Cherished

I read this word and immediately thought of blogging.  There was a time (perhaps when I was more in practice) when hitting "publish" was a cherished act.  It felt so good to work through the discipline of thinking through and writing something that inspired or challenged me.  It made me feel like a good steward of those little "a-ha" moments.  Somewhere in my history I learned that you don't really own something until you can give it away.  So putting my thoughts out there in cyberspace is a way of saying "I get the message."  I'll try to live by it and to pass it on.

I forget when exactly it happened, but life got stressful, I started expecting epiphanies and perfection from myself, and I slowly but surely lost my discipline and rhythm for writing.  (What a horribly constructed sentence!  Don't go back, Regina.  It's against the Five Minute Friday rules.  Uncensored.  Bad grammar.  Keep going.)

This week's word cut through all those feelings and reminded me of why I started this blog 5 years (5 years!) ago.  Because I cherish this.  I cherish the inspiration.  Despite the complaining, I cherish the process.  But most of all, I cherish the chance to share and to be part of...this.  People living and writing and sharing with each other.

Times up.

And I'm at the part of the writing process that is always the most difficult.  How do I wrap this up?  Perhaps in the spirit of unedited roughness I'll just leave it here...

I cherish this.

I'll write again soon.