I was talking with someone recently about blogging, and about writing something that you looked at later and thought, did I really write that? She’d commented on people who have journals and recorded their thoughts and go back to them, when in fact if she was going to go back she’d feel like the journal wasn’t her anymore.
I get this. I used to keep a journal. For years I did. I wrote because I was very young and didn’t have a lot of people to talk to about the things that were weighing on my mind. Writing helped me think.
I kept those journals, and years later I found them in a box and was actually excited when I first saw them. How fun would it be to look back at the way you thought and the things going on in your life. Right? I expected to see silly, sappy, little girl thoughts. I thought I would see a more innocent girl there on those pages.
But what I saw was an unhappy girl. Someone who wasn’t being cared for. She was a mini-adult, not a little girl. She was slapped often and worried about money and wondered where God was. She reached out to people without the knowledge that comes from knowing your self-worth and as a result the people she trusted weren’t so very trusting.
That was years and years ago. A lifetime ago. I realized it then when I read those journals, that those words weren’t even me anymore. They felt weird. Uncomfortable. Like they came from a different person. And really, they were from a different person. God had moved me out and away from all that. I was different.
I burned those journals. Oooh, it felt so good to do that!
But blogging? It’s not so easy to get rid of stuff. Granted, I’m not writing from the perspective of that little girl anymore. I’m an adult sharing news and stories but even then, sometimes I’ll look back on an old post and realize it sounds a little not like me.
Does blogging represent us at all? Do posts make up our true thoughts? In some cases yes, but in others, especially if you pulled pieces out and viewed them away from the original intent and context, no way. And yet, blogging does contain our personalities and thoughts. That’s why we love reading blogs so much. It’s us, even at our ugliest. Even when we’re feeling broken. Even when we’re so happy we don’t know what we’re saying.
Blogging is the culmination of our words, all our growth, our changing attitudes, and the thoughts that never change. Blogging takes all these small moments in time and puts them together, so you can get a sense of who we are.
