Reviewing the situation

I think about this blog a lot. Daily. When I am out walking, or driving alone in my car. I wonder when I first started writing it, and reflect on how so many subjects of my life, thought processes, or the course of my emotional development have featured here in this public forum. Indeed, the sub-title of this blog is "my diagnosis of me," and I have certainly been on a self-exploration journey with it.

My blog has been my companion through some very painful emotional times these past four years. It has served as a connection to the outside world when I felt abandoned and alone. Indeed, here on this blog I was able to work through and confront some key psychological barriers that were really opened up for me with Bob-the-therapist back in my Buffalo days.

This ever-so-personal, while also extremely public, format helped me improve my writing skills, enabling me to complete a second book, and an edited collection of essays.

In short, this blog has supported my personal, social, and professional growth in ways that I could never have imagined. I am ever grateful for it. Now, however, I feel I have reached a cross roads of some kind. At the very least I think I have to find a different purpose for this blog - perhaps even a name or site change - if I am to continue at all. For, if I want social Internet connection, or to keep friends and family updated about my life, Facebook has become a perfectly satisfactory venue for that! Personal ruminations of one kind or another are suitable for my private journal writing, and in any case, I have been thinking about writing a memoir at some stage.

Turning sixty has had a major impact on me. I feel emotionally opened, grounded in a different reality, and at the same time, free to be all I can be. For example, one of the things I have been thinking about since I turned sixty is that I do not seem to need as much emotional support or acknowledgment as I did when I was younger. It is almost as if I am finally able to give up my old longing for parents. Indeed, I am able to parent myself! I have allowed myself to become an adult. So many of those ancient, unrealistic, and adolescent or childish expectations I had of significant people in my life have dissolved and gone away. I seem able to meet others in an emotionally mutual space, where I feel equal and more confident in who I am.

Perhaps I could name my new blog (if I decide to continue blogging) something to do with being in my sixties. 

Hm ... more to think about!

A year ago at Mining Nuggets: Went away ... and - More hats ...

Comments

[tamarika]

MaryB,
As one blogger to another, you so understand this blogging dilemma. It is certainly compounded with facebook in the mix! However, the blog is a much better venue for longer pieces and is great for exploring ideas and feelings - as well as having fun. Thanks so much for continuing to be my blogger buddy and for your comments. Very much appreciated.

Hello there, Marion. Ah! I certainly understand what you are describing here. My first blog: "In and Out of Confidence" surely describes something of what you are going through ... through my brain and eyes of course! I will certainly be giving you a call sometime this week.
love and hugs and ... smiles ...

[Marion Barnett]

Lately, yesterday actually, I was thinking of how your blog has been encouraging me to start a blog during this new phase of my life (I'd call it the insane phase)! What makes it insane? Retire, move 3,000 miles from all your women friends and dear hearts, lose your professional identity completely (it's vanished - poof), turn 60, adapt to a totally different geographical environment, and know not one soul in town. Thursday I had a 20 minute conversation with a woman in the bulk foods section of the Coop and it was almost too much for my vocal cords! Yikes it is solo time out here; me learning to be my own best friend - and "What's on your mind -" in Facebook, isn't able to accommodate enough characters to cover all that seems to be bubbling to the surface of my mind these days. Sound familiar?

[MaryB]

I, too, think about my blog all the time. With a string of great blogging ideas (well, great to me), I find I have little time to flesh them out. That leads to my blog-guilt. :-) I find I'm most content with blogging when I forget everyone else's expectations and just write it for me. I love that my blogs are a record of what's spinning through my head at them moment. I completely understand your feelings about reassessing why/how/what we blog. Thanks!