I’m stumped.
A recent post of mine was featured on Freshly Pressed, and now all sorts of Delightful and Interesting Wordy Types are finding their way to my small corner of the web. (This is actually the second time I’ve been Freshly Pressed, which makes me seriously question the standards at WordPress. The other time, I just re-introduced myself to my new readers, but re-re-introducing myself just seems silly.) I am now writing for what appears to have all the symptoms of being An Actual Audience.
Yikes.
“Our doubts are traitors,
and make us lose the good we oft might win,
by fearing to attempt.” -William Shakespeare, “Measure for Measure”
How do you top yourself? Especially when your small success seems to be a totally random occurrence? I thought about totally cheating by posting some pretty flowers pictures I’ve taken recently: everyone loves flowers, right? But, somehow, that seems wrong. I opened up my Drafts folder, which is actually the Basement of the Blogger: everything down there is really weird (even weirder than some of the stuff I actually post) and smells a bit…stale. There’s certainly not anything down there that should be brought out into the light just yet (although that one thing I started and abandoned about how to speak YouTube is sort of funny…).
It occurs to me that I am not actually all that interesting. I’m essentially a dangerously-close-to-middle-aged woman leading a small life. I now actually have to apply moisturizer nightly. I’m seeing lines where the skin used to be smooth. Just the other day, I plucked a grey hair from my eyebrows, and I can’t seem to find the wisdom that supposed to accompany those god-awful things. I’m at the age people typically seem to finally Have it All Figured Out, and have found Their Niche, and yet, I find I haven’t figured out anything except that the things I thought I had figured out I got all wrong.
My imagination is a monastery and I am its monk. -John Keats
I find myself wondering why people come here. I know that I Have a Way With Words, and that my blog is “so well written”, but well-written is not the same thing as actually saying something of worth.
I know a precious few of you read because they love me. Some read because they are hoping I’ll say Something Controversial or Gossip-Worthy they can add to a sermon illustration or their dinner conversation. But, those are the extremes. The rest of you, dear readers, come here hoping to find something, and that I understand, because I write hoping to find something…
And maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s what draws the curious together: the search, and that relentless cruel hope.
So, thank you, dear readers, for sitting here with me reading and hoping together. I’m so glad we have that collective hope, and I am so happy you’re here.