I know WordPress means well when it sends me my year in blogging, but quite frankly, I don’t write for you. I write for me. I always have and I hope I always will. Oh sure, I want to write for a magazine or even publish my short stories one day, but it will still be for me. I think that’s how writing should be. If it helps other people, good. That was my intention, but ultimately, I am my own critic. I am the one who writes and re-writes posts in my head a hundred times. I am the one who gets up at 3 a.m. and pounds away on the keys when I can’t sleep. I am the one who can’t let an idea go until I get it out…even if I shove it away from me because I don’t feel like posting it at the time. It comes back. Sometimes better, sometimes worse.
It’s like an argument I have with myself. I don’t always say the right words when I want to, and they certainly don’t always come out the way I planned. In my head they sound better and I can hear the way I meant to get the point across, but occasionally, it morphs into something else. That’s fine. I know what I meant. The best part about all of this is when you do get me. When you click “like” or find me days later, and say, hey, you know that piece you wrote on the horrible thing? And I look at you like you are crazy because I don’t know what you are about to say, and you say it really meant something to you. That’s the part about this that I love. So thank you for a great year even if my stats aren’t the highest or I don’t have the most likes on my FB page or the most followers on Twitter or you don’t read this every time I publish something. Because I write for me. You are an added benefit.
“Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.” ~Graham Greene
