I miss writing.

I read a really interesting post the other day in a blog that I started following primarily for the guy's recaps of The Bachelor. It was far from the normal hilariousness he normally posts, and it really got me thinking about why I have this blog. He was talking about why he writes, and was talking about his grandfather. One of my favorite sections of the post:

He made me want to write. And he taught me the only reason I needed to write was because, “because.”
Then, one day, I began to write for a living and experienced a conflicting moment when I had trouble finding my “because”.
It’s always so petty, that moment.
“I don’t have any good ideas.”
“I don’t have anything interesting to say.”
“I will misspell a word and people will judge me for not being the best at never making a mistake in my writing, all of the time, always.”
“I will incorrectly use effect/affect as I may have done above. Shit, did I incorrectly use effect/affect?”
“People will just rip whatever I say apart and hurt my feelings.”
These are all terrible, horrible, no good, very bad reasons.

Believe it or not, I did not start this blog solely to post pictures every day. While I'm enjoying this picture a day challenge, it wasn't why I decided to blog.  The tagline under the title of this blog, "These words are my diary screaming out loud," are a pretty perfect description. Yes, I stole them from an Anna Nalick song, although I wish I had written them myself. The thing is, I've always loved to write. I wrote stories when I was a kid. I started writing songs when I was 12. Every time I moved, I could never understand why even though I wrote tons of letters to my friends in the old neighborhood, nobody put quite as much effort into writing me back. I thought it was because they had forgotten me, or maybe they didn't like me as much as I thought, or they didn't want to be my friend anymore, or any other number of reasons. But looking back now, I think it might have just been that they didn't like to write as much as I did. And do.

But lately I've been severely slacking. I don't remember the last time I wrote a song. I've written phrases down here and there, started more than I can count, thought about it all the damn time, but I have zero product to show for it. Even this blog has been slacking. Sure, I've been posting every day, and just about every picture has a caption. But really, that's a cop out. There's not much thought that goes into those pictures. There's no risk, other than people saying oh good, another picture of her cats. Or what she had for dinner. Because let's be real, that's what most of the pictures comprise.

I know I've said before that I want to try to blog more, and I haven't generally succeeded. But I'm working on it. I want to be writing again. I want to be creative again. I want to feel like I have a place to express myself, to hash out my feelings and emotions in a way that, while not everyone will always understand, will make me feel better. That's always why I've written. And I miss it.