Tag Archives: writing

Elder grateful month — day 7 — written word

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It’s been a week, 7 days, since I started blogging about one thing I’m grateful for per day and I’m beginning to wonder if a month is too long.  Maybe it should be Elder Grateful Semi-Month.  I’ve never written every day….this shit’s hard.

Regardless, today I am grateful for the written word.  Without it, I couldn’t tell you that this shit is hard unless you were sitting in the same room with me or we were on the phone together.  The written word, the ability to communicate through 26 little letters arranged to form words, astounds and humbles me.

I have always been a voracious reader.  Probably the biggest single milestone of my life was when I learned to read — it changed everything for me.  (Wow….I peaked at 6….)  From that point forward, my favorite thing to do has been to read.  I will read anything:  books, magazines, brochures, pamphlets, cards, whatever has words on it.  If there is a moment of down time, I’m looking for something to read.  I may learn something, pick up some new knowledge or entertain myself for a moment.  They were right!  Reading IS FUNdamental!

I can’t imagine life before the written word.  I’ve read (!!) about how many cultures and civilizations lasted for centuries with their mythologies and stories passed down from generation to generation simply through memory and story-telling.  How??  I can’t remember what to buy at the grocery store without writing it down and I buy the same stuff every week.  How did Gawain and the Green Knight survive the Dark Ages?

With the written word, we can share ideas, knowledge, facts or fiction without ever being located in the same place.  It can be shared over distant times.  A story can last forever.

That is simply ….. well, I just can’t find a word for it.  But it’s big.

I know me, most of the time

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I am relatively new at blogging, at least new at blogging consistently.  I dabbled in it for several years, but only recently began to write on a frequent basis.  And I’ve learned by reading other blogs and help and how to guides that bloggers are a lot like teenage girls — they crave feedback and approval.  They want to be popular, have a lot of followers, have a lot of likes.  What’s the point of taking the risk of putting your words and thoughts out there in cyberspace if not to get some positive feedback in return?

There is a lot of advice out there on how to get more readers, including to focus your blogs.  Blog on a theme, to specialize.  Like blog about desserts or cooking.  Or blog about gaming.  Or blog about children.  Or blog about gaming that includes cooking desserts for children.

Get These Thoughts Out of My Head

Well, that advice doesn’t help me at all.  I don’t focus or specialize at anything.

What am I an expert at?

**Crickets chirp.  Minutes pass.  Silence is king.**

I know the most about being me, living my life.  I wouldn’t even say that I specialize at being me.  There are more times than I wish that I would like to send in a substitute player for myself to live my life for the day while I stay home and watch true crime.  The sub surely couldn’t make any worse decisions during that 24 hour period than I do.  Maybe they would even make better ones.  Bonus!

So, I may never have thousands of followers or be voted Blog High School Homecoming Queen because there apparently isn’t a big group of followers for “middle-aged Southerner writing about her days”.  But frankly, I would rather read about the things that I find interesting than chocolate cakes or battling asteroids.  Oh, but if it were asteroids made of chocolate cake–that I would find interesting.  And handy to just walk outside and pick up cake.

UPDATE:  I’ve been informed that asteroids don’t hit the earth often, and if they do, it’s not good, i.e. that movie “Armageddon”.  I was envisioning little chocolate cake asteroids floating down, like manna.  Apparently, I need to be following some science blogs.