Sunday, September 28, 2014

Back On The Blog/ Blogging as a Buoy



Here I am again; Sitting on my old desk chair, headphones in, staring at a mostly empty Word document trying to come up with a string of words decent enough to be posted on the interwebs. I had not expected to find myself in this position ever again. Somewhere during the first weeks of summer I stopped blogging. I stopped trying to come up with 600 words or less pieces about wrung out truths. I stopped typing or picking up pens. I stopped writing.

Summer is a time for re-invention, or so thought. I was just recovering from my junior year of high school, which had been far from positive and now that I had time to look back at all that had happened, all the mistakes I made and the effect they had had on my mental health, I decided I needed a change. Or to be more exact, changes. Plural.

My plan for ‘ having a better senior year and life in general’  relied so heavily on the belief that change was beneficial, that I quit and threw out almost anything that related to my junior year. This blog included. I thought that to get to a better place, I could not take anything that reminded me of where I came from with me.

I could not have been more wrong. While coming up with my grand scheme to turn around my life, I forgot that I had to thank many little positive activities for the fact that I even got through junior year. These ‘me-experiences’ like writing this blog, riding horses and wasting time with my friends in the park had functioned as coping mechanism. Maybe all these experiences were all somehow overshadowed by the terribleness of my school year and maybe I didn’t need them as much while it was summer, but that does not mean they are unimportant.

It means the exact opposite, actually. Right now, I like to believe that the things we reach for when we are bored/lonely/sad/confused/tired are the ones that matter most. Because they somehow alleviate all the suckiness that is going on for a moment. Recently on Rookie I read Dylan describe hobbies as ‘doors’. I don’t think hobbies are just ‘doors’, they can also be buoys. What we hold on to, to prevent save ourselves from drowning. It’s incredible how important finding those things that relieve your misery is, because then you will know no matter how low you get in life, you will always  have writing/dancing/watching Friends/playing with your dogs/playing soccer to lift you up.

So that is my overly lengthy explanation as to why I’m returning to this blog with a somewhat clumsily written post. Because I want to keep my buoy in the water.

Let's have a song. 'Cause that's how I used to end my posts.