Is blogging relevant anymore?
This question has been floating around my mind the past while. With the proliferation of podcasts, Instagram (all social media in general, really), etc. it has me wonder who the special people are on this planet that actually carve out the time to read a blog.
(Well, if you're seeing this, I suppose that's you. Hi, love!)
In the name of honesty, I only read a handful, because it really does take a carving out in the way that audio media and mindless social scrolling doesn't. Plus, I read books, like probably you do too. In fact, I'm off to live in a different part of the city this week, and (as ever) my bags are filled with what I'm guestimating is 80% books -- the other 20% being a miscallaneous heap of essential oils, journals, cosmetics, and my array of kimonos and shirts so big they may as well be called smocks.
(Okay, sorry for the tangent. Back to it.)
I bring this all up as a simple question, or observation, not because I plan to stop blogging. For me, this form of sharing is far from a chore. It's more like a release in public, which comes really handy on days like today when I need to hit the road in thirty minutes and crave writing, yet know I couldn't possibly dive into the novel with such a petite window of time. Plus, I still think this form of communicating is unique in that it can be a way to tell the story of your life as it unfolds, rather than in retrospect as we often do when we give interviews, and that hold a special sort of magic doesn't it?
I'm gearing up to give a talk at the Fearless Women's Summit next month (which is incidentally part of why I'm moving this week -- for more space than I currently have to rehearse), and anyway in it I'm touching up on the power that comes with community. Of course, there are so many ingredients that make community not only beautiful, but vital, but here I'm referring to the ingredient that is sharing your process with another who, too, is moving through their own process. It's a motivational, inspiring thing when you can turn to you friend, as Carina and I so often do on the podcast, and go, "I have no idea if this is going to work but here's what I'm playing with..." and then hear said friend respond with their thoughts and then own experiences that lie in this same vein.
That's what blogging has brought to my life, and I know I'm not unqiue in this. Blogging has helped me find my community, both online and offline. I'm so grateful for it. I think it's because of its nature, being less ephemeral than social media, less snap-shotty, more genuine, that has led this form of media to become the most cherished for me. It's the way I've most deeply been able to place myself as I truly am out into the universe, and receive, in turn, the likeminded souls-cum-friends that I have. And that means everything to me.
So, even if blogging is beginning to take on a label as "irrelevant," I don't believe I'll ever stop it.
If you're reading this and feel the same, do let me know here.
xx,
M
