Why I blog

For the last several months, I've been thinking about why I blog. I wondered if it was just a ploy to get attention. I now doubt that. Although I enjoy it when others read and interact with my thoughts, readership is not my primary objective. But what, then, is my primary objective?

I haven't been able to answer that question with any degree of satisfaction until last night. I was sitting in Ball State's library waiting to meet a friend after doing some research. I took a break from reading about Adlerian therapy to enjoy my new pleasure, Telling Secrets by Frederick Buechner.

Buechner has this to say about the vital importance of telling one’s story:

But I talk about my life anyway because if, on the one hand, hardly anything could be less important, on the other hand, hardly anything could be more important. My story is important not because it is mine … but because if I tell it anything like right, the chances are you will recognize that in many ways it is also yours. Maybe nothing is more important than that we keep track, you and I, of these stories of who we are and where we have come from and the people we have met along the way because it is precisely through these stories in all their particularity … that God makes himself known to each of us most powerfully and personally. If this is true, it means that to lose track of our stories is to be profoundly impoverished not only humanly but also
spiritually. (30)

I suppose I was onto something in January when I discussed blogging for mental heath. Blogging is not so much about the self-important broadcast of thought (or at least it doesn’t have to be), it’s a means by which we live in community. I still keep a private journal as I process some of my deeper secrets, but I’m learning to reach out in my introspection in counseling, in relationships and in this blog.

I’ve been told on several occasions that I write differently than I speak. Some people think this is a horrible trait while others see it as an interesting quirk. I’m choosing to believe the latter. I don’t think anyone needs to read my blog or any other writing I’ve done to get to know me, but I do think it adds a dimension to who I am that would otherwise not be there. For some reason, God created me with an ability to make my thoughts somewhat clear on paper (er… word processor), much clearer than they’ll ever be in my head. I’ve tried to fight this fact for the last several months, but I can no longer hide from the truth. This is just the way God made me.

So I will write, in whatever form that takes. Writing is not my identity; it is a means by which I can explore who I am, who God is and what this world is all about. Feel free to join me on this journey.