Back to blogging 2

This hiatus has been longer than the last few. 

It’s been so long I was wondering whether it was the end of Stories Sentiments and Sometimes Stupidity, whether I’ve outgrown it or now that I’m embarking down the path that is university as a mature age student (WHAT) whether I’ll have the time for it.

What has prompted me to write this (aside from that I’ve been meaning to write for ages) was I sent an old post to a new friend. Before sending it, I re-read it and it bought a smile to my face. This blog has been a constant intestine for me to digest the food for thought for more than five years, and being able go back and see how my taste and ability to stomach and process things has changed is a lovely thing.

I know my commitment to readers has probably made them drop off, and so I’ll have to come grovelling back, but it has to start somewhere.

There’s a few reasons why I stopped writing for a while.

I’m not going to mention them, but all I will say is that I know they are going to shape me to be a better writer.

After all, it’s those textures we come up with after being buried that allow us to blossom. 

Whilst I haven't been writing on here I have been exposing myself to many different forms of art, prose, writing and witticisms, and I am growing to understand other words on a different level to before.

Like last weekend when I was performing at Splendour in the Grass festival and band All our Exes Live in Texas’ ballads sent the tears rolling down my cheeks. 

I never connected with lyrics in the same way before. 

Or when a yoga teacher drops a smidge of poetry or philosophy into a class and the hairs on my sweaty arms stand up.

My sweaty hairs didn't stand up before.

Or when all of the creative wise people around me pour out their beings on one platform or another.

Or when my sister strongly tells me of the joys and challenges of being a mum to a newborn and a toddler.

These words I connect with so much more now than I did before. 

More than six months through the year and I am still forcing myself again to “slow down baby” as I wrote at the beginning of this year (note that post also comes after a writing hiatus bahhh.)

One thing I am going to mention that has stopped me from writing is the block of calling oneself "a writer." I went for a walk in the Dandenong ranges with a friend on Friday (that was part of slowing down) and he commented on how I'm a writer. I responded with "pish"....

Elizabeth Gilbert (author of Eat, Pray, Love and Big Magic) has a podcast called Magic Lessons, where she talks to Q-List schmucks like myself and challenges them to make the art they have always wanted, then talks with actual established authors, poets and artists about ways the person can fully own their creativity. 

One question she often asks people is - "Who is it that says you are a writer?" and "why should it not be you? You wrote a letter to me, you ARE a writer." 

I think we struggle with titles a lot now, because the internet has allowed us to branch out and run businesses and publish things from our bedrooms. 

I could go on about that, but there's just a little seed to plant for you.

I'm (nervously) giving myself permission to call myself a writer- to add to the list of other things I now call myself (which changes all the time.)

Because life is too short to hide that little light away and let this story, these sentiments, and sometimes the stupidity die a ghosted death on the internet like a Tinder match that you never manage to tee that date up with even though you knew it would be amazing.

The final thing which roused me to get a tap tap tappin' on they keys was my boss, a blokey bloke, showed me a piece of writing that was from the heart, a little piece of art. Something he had never written before or shown to anyone, and that is a bloody brave, and very blokey move. 

So here I am, back to blogging. Maybe once a fortnight or every week, and I do have a stash of poems I wrote when I was a child I can just recycle, but I'm getting it done.

What are you going to give yourself permission to do creatively?

It doesn't have to leave your bedroom or your lips.

But doing it,

Just for the sake of it,

is magic.

And you don't have to be Harry Potter to know there needs to be a little more magic in the world.

Jj