Out of Practice
This Lent, instead of taking something away I’m going to add. And take something away, sort of.
I miss the golden age of blogging (which, in my universe, was about 8 years ago). Much as I love short-form social media for staying connected, my Facebook posts and conversations are little dribs and drabs throughout the day, and I miss thinking in broader strokes. Those little dips into the adult world where many of you are thinking deep thoughts (or, sometimes, jus wonderfully silly thoughts) are a life-line for me during days when I’m mostly absorbed with taking care of my kids. This is why I don’t go in for the full Lenten Fast from Social Media: it’s how I’m best able to stay connected to friends in far flung places, and people I can’t get together with face to face more regularly because my social calendar in this season of my life is largely filled with the needs of the small people who live in my house. I’m grateful for it.
But I miss the way blogs let people interact with more extended thoughts back in the day. And I miss pushing myself to spend a little more time thinking about something, crafting a thought, and bringing it through to it’s end. I miss the comment threads on blogs, and the way I kept up with people through their thoughts and more expanded views into scenes from their daily lives.
I miss the way that a blog post allowed me to think in paragraphs instead of sentences. My writing has gone sorely out of practice.
So, this Lent, I’m going to try to channel some of that social media time into longer form writing, mostly for the sake of my own brain, in the hopes that it will be a reminder to me of the sense of self that I got from writing more regularly. I might dip into the social media world less frequently during a given day, and channel that effort into the blogging. If you want to follow along, I’d love to have you here. (And, yes, of course, I’ll be linking it up to Facebook, maybe even Twitter!) But I’m not telling myself this will be daily: I’m aiming for four times a week.That’s a little extension of grace to myself.