Slowly Opening the Door

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about what I write on this blog.  As I get more and more interested in writing I find that my need to expose this blog is becoming greater.  This is the largest collection of my writing that exists (even though it is actually quite small).  The majority of my thoughts written with pen and paper have been destroyed at some point (usually in fits of rage), with the exception of a few research papers that were written for school.  Even though many of the posts here are quite mundane, I love seeing the progression of my writing.  I think I have drastically improved since the beginning of my first blog (I wrote elsewhere before I came here).

The thought of my real life family and friends reading the words I have written here absolutely terrifies me.  Opening it up to Hubby was hard enough.  I am not they type to talk openly about my feelings.  In fact, I generally try to hide my true feelings even from myself.  There are parts of me that not even my closest friends know about.  Blogging has helped me to express thoughts and feelings that previously only existed inside my head.  It has helped me discover so much about myself and to come out of my shell a little bit.  It taught me about self-expression, and about how good it feels when someone else really gets you.

Blogging has helped me to branch out and explore possibilities that I never would have considered in the past.  I applied for online writing positions and actually got one.  I have become much more interested in photography, even though I still don’t have the equipment to be able to branch out much with it.  I even started knitting after reading about so many other bloggers that were making such cool things.  It has even pointed me to books that I really need to be reading. 

I’m not sure where I’m really trying to go with this, except to say that blogging has done so many good things for me.  It has become increasingly harder not to mention my blog in casual conversations.  It is even more difficult not to mention all of the really great people that I have “met” through blogging.  I find myself saying, “I was talking to this online friend today…” entirely too much and eventually people are going to start wondering who in the heck I’m talking to.  I think I am closer to my online friends than my real life friends these days.

My fear and lack of confidence in myself have kept me from sharing this web page with the people in my life that I care about the most.  As time goes by I feel my false sense of privacy that I once had here closing in and I wonder if I should not just go ahead and tell them all Plain Jane style.  Regardless of whether I tell them or not, it is going to come out, at least to those that live near me-if they are paying attention.  The thought of that makes my heart sink and my head get a little dizzy, but I think perhaps it is time.  I’m a little tired of living in the closet.