Why I Blog — Three Reasons

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I’ve been thinking a lot lately about why I blog. It’s been ten years now of 175-200 posts per year. That’s Monday through Thursday most weeks. And prior to that, it was ten years of more sporadic posting. Streaks here and there. I’ve been thinking about why I blog so often about little noticings. Micro-awarenesses. Little appreciations.

Quite often when blogging, I start by perusing my recent photos on my phone. I’m looking for something interesting. Something little. Something micro. Something that created a recent appreciative moment. The photo above, geese standing on ice, at a nearby pond where Dana and I walked Sunday — does the trick. I like the reflection of the geese. I like the mental surprise (a pond where geese are often swimming, but are now standing). I liked wondering about what geese might think of their partially frozen pond.

Back to the why of blogging. For me.

1. I blog so as to live an attentive life. A curious life. A curiosity with how life flows. And organizes. And invites. And compels. I like converting that noticing from perception to words. It’s inner found through outer. It’s outer created through found inner.
2. I blog to develop a habit and practice of appreciation. For learning. For beauty. For celebration. Appreciation as a lifestyle. As a way of being. As an operating mode to encounter the world. As a kindness to the complexity within me an around me.
3. I blog to encourage associativeness. To connect things. To speak of connection that already is. To widen the lane of perception through the most narrow of openings. I both like and need to feel things non-linear. And less reductive.

And, and, and. There are more likely 47 reasons why I blog. Maybe even 113. But today, this is enough fFor me. And for a few of my closer-in peeps that also seek to sort their lives. Micro-practices of attention, appreciation, association — yup, it’s some of the best simple that I know. For blogging. For living as human.