Blogging is one of those things I want to do more of when I don’t have the time, and when I do have the time, I don’t want to. The reason for that, I think, is my internal steam valve.

When I’m bogged down with work and the day seems like a conveyor belt of meetings with just enough breaks between to squeeze in a reminder for yet another high-priority project, I need to let some of the pressure off. For me, it usually means going to do something else. If I’m working from home, I go to the kitchen to clean up and do dishes. If I’m at the office, I go out for a short walk and grab a snack or say hello to someone I haven’t seen in a while.

I need these few minutes away from the screen to remind myself I still have a pair of legs, eyeballs that would appreciate seeing things that are more than 20 inches away from my face, and most importantly, a brain that needs to stop trying to figure out how to make sense out of everything and just be. This also means no blogging.

Ideally though, that would be the best time to do so: a couple of minutes to look through my RSS feeds or my saved articles to read and come up with something, or just attend to my blog. But we’ll get back to that in a minute. Let’s talk about Jack for a second.

Jack seems to be in a bit of a rut recently. I can’t find the post now (it’s a bit challenging to follow everything the guy says everywhere), but he was talking about taking a break. Then, for his 25th blog anniversary, he said he thought about shutting down his website as a present to himself. That hit somewhere under the surface for me and made a little splash. So I went to wash some dishes. Here I was, trying to figure out how to find the time (and mostly the mental energy) to blog more, and this guy is like, “My blog has become a simple journal. It doesn’t mean anything. I write about what I’m thinking or what I feel like sharing. That’s it… Some days I love doing it. Other days I wonder why I bother.”

What do you mean why do you bother?? It’s Blogging Jack! It’s the cornerstone of grumpy farts like us who… don’t know why… they even… bother….? Thanksalot, man! Ughh!

Back to me and my blogging is a steam valve. I have another release that I use often and frequently, a very close second to blogging: my journal. With years of writing, my blogging voice is not much different than my journal one. It’s a slow process, but I do have more posts today on the blog that came straight out of my journal. Sure, the separation is still important; some things are just not meant for public eyes, while others are so half-assed written and riddled with typos I actually go back and edit those (yes, in my own journal, I want to be able to read it in the future if I can). But the point is, there’s almost not a single day these days there isn’t something written down. I guess that means there’s a lot of steam building up. And that, apparently, is not a bad thing - if I attend to it the ways I mentioned.

We humans have a lot of thoughts. It’s only when we wind down and relax that we can slow down enough to process them in a linear way that allows coherent ideas. Most of the time, there’s so much going on upstairs that we can’t connect the pieces. It’s like chasing dry leaves in the wind. Writing things down slows us down enough to process, which in turn leads to “ah ha!” moments, which is why everyone you’d ask (including your therapist probably) would tell you to keep some form of a journal, especially if you need to think things over.

Blogging is how we reach out for opinions. When I write in my blog, I write in my public voice, the one that is open to criticism and asking for feedback. It’s me saying, “Here, I’ve been having these thoughts, what do you make of it?” This is why blogging and journaling are closely related. If you think, you can journal. If you can journal, you can blog. You don’t have to be crazy like me and go through all sorts of internal filters (but you probably do anyway) and edit your own journal entries; you can just let them out. Don’t worry about it. I mean, have you seen what’s on the internet lately? And you’re worried about offending someone with your thoughts?

So, we live and we work, we have a lot going on, we need a break to slow down, we process, we write, we blog, and we invite people to start a conversation with us. One of the things I found myself doing recently is sending links to my posts to my friends/partners/family. That’s because I have an idea processed already, a conversation I want to have, and it’s just easy to “here, what do you think of this,” instead of starting to type it all up again in a chat. It’s even typo-free. Mostly.

I’m not sure exactly how to be able to write more and when, but I know I want to. There’s just so much stuff. And in a way, yeah, it doesn’t mean anything. I don’t think bothering with a meaning is helpful for anything on a blog. I’m not here trying to sell you on something (besides blogging in itself maybe, fine…) or get a point across to you, I’m just chatting.