50

today is a special day for my blog - this is the 50th post!  i guess i actually stuck with it long enough to get this far, which is really cool and in a way totally rewarding.  i am no further on the book i am writing than when i began, other than narrowing down my topic, but i feel so much more ready to write.  hey, i am writing!  this may not be a book, but i am putting so much into words that i did not have words for before.  what an amazing, and at times scary, experience this has been so far.

writing is a strange thing.  it is a great way to process all the thoughts and emotions that swirl around inside behind the frame of me that people can see, but it is at the same time scary for the very same reason.  writing is so vulnerable because it exposes the very raw and intimate parts of oneself and sometimes i am not sure how much i want exposed. writing for me is part of the processing of life.  i have found that sometimes words spill out onto the page that were not well thought out, but were the only way i could momentarily relieve some of the building pressure inside.  i have at times looked back at what i have written and only understood it in the larger context of knowing the surrounding events at that time of my life.  written words have served as markers for points of my life and i am taken right back to the very context in which they are written even reading them again many years down the road.

and yet there are times when i have been going through sometime very hard in life and i have found that i have stopped writing in my journal, for sometimes quite large stretches of time, because i am afraid for even my own eyes to have a glimpse of the true state of my soul.  imagine that dynamic to be ten times worse in blogging when the realization hits that who knows how many people's eyes will have a window to something i can't even bear to look upon myself.  as great as processing may be, how much do i want to expose to anyone who may stumble across my way and how much access am i willing to give to my heart? 

that is not to say that every time i am not writing regularly that i am walking through hard stuff because i have found myself to be just as  negligent in writing during the really good times.   i often rely on my memory to soak up all the joy and bliss in situations and fail to realize that i could immortalize that feeling to revisit forever if i would only take the time to put it into written words.  how quickly my memory fades, even as much as i would like to remember every last detail of those wow experiences. 

and now, as i have managed to remain completely vague while trying to express the feelings i have inside after hitting the big 50 mark on this blog.  hopefully it is not just a bunch of nonsense thrown out there when i hit publish.

here is to 50 posts.  may there be 50 more to come that share a window into me while i walk the journey laid out ahead. 

charis