Magical Beginnings
“And suddenly you know: It’s time to start something new and trust the magic of beginnings.” ~-~ Meister Eckhart
It’s been a very long time since I last wrote a real blog post.
I took this site offline in 2016 or 2017 to do a total revamp, change direction, divorce it from my private journals and try to be more selective about where I posted what. Somewhere along the line, instead of sorting posts into archives an determining what blogs/sites to keep, I just…stopped writing.
I told myself that I would start writing regularly again once the site was cleaned up and organized. But that just became an excuse to not write as more and more time went on without my being able to get things organized. Other things took focus. I discovered that the longer I remained in my job as a Technical Writer, the less I wanted to write for pleasure or enjoyment once I was off the clock. Then, after i switched positions, I didn’t have time still because this new position was far too demanding.
And, as I looked around, blogging just wasn’t what it used to be any longer.
Gone were the prevalence of personal blogs talking about whatever interested someone in the moment. Those were relegated to the old LiveJournal sites and clones for longform writing, Tumblr and social media for shortform. Most of the blogs I’d followed back in the day had stopped updating before or around the same time I did. What I saw after was the age of the niche blog, the single-focus topics that I had never been good at because I had far too many interests to narrow my writing down to just a single area, or a few related ones. I’d tried to split up my writing into multiple places: here, Tumblr, Dreamwidth. It just didn’t work for me.
The last year or so has been a time of change for me, however, and I find myself being drawn back to this type of forum: a forum of written words and personal reflection. I’ve gotten back into paper planning and analog journaling. I’ve been drawn back into tabletop roleplaying and old spirituality practices. I’m coming at these things now from the perspective of moving into middle age instead of learning to navigate adulthood.
I’ve changed careers. Through a stroke of luck during the pandemic, I was able to get promoted from Technical Writing to Product Management. I was looking to escape a problematic boss and a position with no growth potential, looking at transitioning to Project Management. Then, the pandemic caused a hiring freeze and I was brought in to help in the Product position, only to discover I sort of enjoy it.
One of the things I was learning as a Technical Writer, though, was that the more I wrote for a living, the less I wanted to write for pleasure. Now that I’ve been away from that for a couple years, I can feel the need to put words into sentences becoming stronger. When I was in my twenties and writing fanfic, original shorts, blogging regularly, I used to say that I didn’t care about making money with my creative work. I just wanted to put the words out there so that whoever needed to read them could find them.
I think it’s time to go back to that philosophy and see what I can create.