What to Say

Recently, I have started reading a few blogs.  It is just like me not to read other people's blogs before diving into one of my own. I tend to hear about something and want to try it out before I see how others are doing it.  But the problem is that I start, I stop, I start, I stop.  And the stopping goes on for months and months while the starting is over in a snap.

Next semester, I want to get my AP Lit seniors blogging.  I did this last year, another "dive in" experience without much research or guidance, and while I was pleased, I knew it could be more.  However, in order for this to be the type of exercise I hope it will be -- authentic, meaningful, insightful and inspiring -- I believe I have to be blogging, too.

So, I decided to go against my nature and explore what others are doing to see if that might help get me out from under my comfy blanket of excuses.  And it has!  While it is a bit like shedding those covers in the morning  in December (exposing warm skin to the bitterness of dark winter air), it is also invigorating.  And what I realized is that I don't have to have something to say before I begin to write. I kept waiting for this avalanche of inspiration to engulf me and the only way to shovel my way out would be through words.

What I see now is that writing here is more like walking out into fresh snowfall -- I make meaning as I go. 

Apparently the holidays have influenced my choice of metaphor -- being a Southern Californian who's never even been skiing, it certainly isn't personal experience.  But isn't that how things work -- even that which we don't know, we do.  And so I am not a 17 year old baker, or a well-respected marketing genius -- when I read the blogs of those writers this week, I found out not just what they thought, but what I think, or at least what I want to think about.

Tonight, that is what I have to say.