12.1.14

Transition.


Sundays used to be the day I blogged.  As an ambitious university student I savoured these evenings of carefully crafting my simple thoughts into what I thought were bold and profound statements of clever intelligence.

These days I'm still a university student.  I just seem to have lost that same ambition.

If I were to sit down and try to figure out why this old hobby of mine has faded away I could readily come up with a handful of excuses.  I'm pretty sure the ultimate answer would be that I needed an outlet to voice my insecurities.  Believe it or not, deep down I've always been an incredibly insecure young adult and blogging was my therapy.

I've been told before that one of the reasons Eminem is such a successful rapper is because he threw all of his weaknesses out there.  Although I don't listen to his music, I've heard that his rivals and enemies could never get anything on him because he was always the first person to lyrically tell the world all of his insecurities.  Which is pretty well the approach I took to my blog.  What is there for me to fear if I'm the one in control of and voicing my weaknesses?

Perhaps this approach is viewed as brave.  To be honest, it was completely driven by fear.  Since I grew up in a small town, I grew accustomed to the fact that my weaknesses and insecurities would eventually be discovered and then talked about by everyone in my sphere.  That's how small towns work.  And since this terrified me, if I was going to be talked about, I wanted my own words to be what was circulated.  Eventually this fear grew into bravery.

So since I haven't blogged much, does that mean that my insecurities have all faded away?  No.  They're just labelled differently.  My weaknesses and insecurities are facts and have been accepted as such.  I still work at improving them, they just no longer scare me in a way that they used to.  In fact, many of them now make me smile or laugh at myself.

Now where does this leave my blog?  Well, in my first year of university, I did a thesis project in a class called "Physical Activity and the Aging Adult."  Essentially, my entire project was dedicated to figuring out what the main motivations were for older adults to run.  To be honest, my own motivations for participating in this activity were horribly negative (ie. for self esteem, to not get fat, to keep my body in a shape that I could fathom loving) and I was curious to see if this would be something I continued to struggle with for my entire life.  It was relieving to see that for the most part the motivation for running changed (ie. for fun, to socialize, to keep fit), but still older adults continued to run.  For now, I'm still trying to transition into finding a new reason to blog.


8 comments on "Transition."
  1. Man I was just thinking that I missed your blogging. Thanks for the update. The result of your thesis is pretty motivating in itself for me to keep on running. Small town talk is always the best isn't it? One of my greatest fears, too. I found the YSA to be very similar to a little town as well. Good idea, though, to let the talk be your own words.

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    1. Haha, aww thanks. Even though I haven't been blogging... I've still been creeping and I've been loving your blog! Hope married life is treating you and Burns well :) And YSA is TOTALLY like a small town.

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  2. I blog so that my kids/grandkids will know what kind of a person I was. I love how Grandma Gibb's book is just full of stories and HER personality. Love it. I learned a lot about her. I think your blog does just that. Just keep being real. I used to write songs only when I was sad, and I remember my Mom saying, "Why don't you ever write happy songs?" ...and it was because when I am happy, I want to be out and having fun and doing my thing. When I feel like crap or am having a thoughtful moment I want to write about it. Probably like you. You don't want to blog unless you are feeling thoughtful about something. Otherwise you are busy being a student or chilling with the hubs. No harm in that! I think you keep a good balance between the very thoughtful and keeping it light and happy. I think one of my fav posts of yours was about your Dad. I bet he loved that. And I bet your kids/grandkids will love it too!

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    1. SOOO TRUE!! The more I've thought about blogging it seems like a lot of the really "successful" bloggers have gone through something horribly traumatic (ex. Nie Nie Dialogues), and even my own posts that have been "popular" had to do with me going through something not so fun. I don't know what it is, but creativity is fueled by sadness a little I think. Thanks for sharing some insight on reasons to blog.

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  3. It's hard to blog when you lose your motive for it. It seems like there's been a big exodus, at least of the bloggers I follow, and I've even found it hard to think of things to blog about. My motive for blogging is that I think of it as a journal with pictures. If I can't think of anything in particular to blog about I do these posts: http://emmeskoien.blogspot.com/search/label/Lately?zx=72c0024aeba94a96. I'm glad you blogged though! I missed reading your posts.

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    1. I really like your lately posts! They're so simple but they tell so much about the state you're in at that moment. And when you look back, just those few simple sentences will probably be able to tell you so much about yourself at that moment in your life. I need to be more like you and blog for the purpose of keeping a journal! Thanks :)

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  4. As someone who also hasn't been able to blog much lately, I can relate. Before I started my current blog, I had a blog that I kept for, well, years - from the time I was 15 until about last year. I reached a point where the person I had become was so different from the person who started the blog that I couldn't keep writing. I felt sort of limited by the person I used to be - whenever I wrote, I felt all this internal pressure to explain current me in light of the me who started the blog so many years ago, to sort of justify how I'd changed or to explain my present life in relation to what it used to be. And I think that pressure was all in my mind (because it's normal and expected that a person goes though a lot of changes between the ages of 16 and 23), but it made it hard to write. You've gone through so much, and grown so much, during the time you've had this blog - maybe you are experiencing a similar thing?

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    1. Hailey - you are a genius. Thank you so much for saying this. Honestly, I was on the edge of this idea but just couldn't wrap my head around it until you summed it up so perfectly. I've changed. Simple as that. And it's tough to be creative when you feel the need to justify these changes.

      You're the best. And I miss your blogging too.

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