I love to blog because it allows me a space to get my thoughts out. At first I wasn’t sure about having a blog since I tend to be a pretty private person, but to be honest I had all these journals I had written through my life, and I wondered, What if I wrote electronically? I also watched the movie Julie and Julia, and in the film Julie Powell keeps a blog about mastering recipes by Julia Child. She wrote at a time when there weren’t all these blogs about blogging and it was the early days of blogging, but I think reflecting on that movie and seeing how blogging gave Julie this deeper purpose in life and joy really inspired me to start one of my own. I actually started a WordPress blog around 2014 or 2015 but I discontinued it because I was a total perfectionist at the time and after writing one article I was super critical of myself and thought it sounded like trash and that I would never blog again. At the time I was a philosophy and Afro-American Studies major and I wanted to create an academic blog about philosophy and Afro-American Studies, so I wrote my first post on Saartjie Bartman, who was a Black woman who was exploited and put on display in Europe during the 19th century (to be honest, recounting the history is pretty difficult for me because it’s just so disgusting how brutally she was treated so I won’t go into a long explanation. I will just say, the account of Saartjie Bartman’s exploitation is disturbing, painful and sad. It made me an angry Black woman.) I don’t know why I deleted the post or discontinued the blog, but that was the end of the blog and I ended up not writing a blog again. In 2019, I decided I was just going to try again. I had a full time job, was stressed and I just wanted to write. So I took a class or two on Skillshare about blogging and realized finally after many months of blank screens that I just needed to sit down and write some stuff.
To be honest, I still struggle with perfectionism when writing on my blog. I may sit at the screen and think, “Will people actually like this?” But that’s why I’m glad I have a spiritual/ religious practice to keep me grounded and to remind me that I deserve to write and call myself a writer, and that at the end of the day the important thing is that you sat down and wrote. When I chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo I am basically saying that I am respect-worthy and love myself. It doesn’t mean I have stopped dealing with insecurities but I have something to weather those insecurities and get me back to my main purpose in life, which is to just be the truest most authentic version of myself that I can so that I can encourage other people to be their true authentic selves. Because what I’ve learned in my time as a writer is that you’re going to write bad drafts, but it’s better to have bad material you can sift through and edit than a blank page with nothing on it. Of course, I do love to put my writing on paper first; that’s why I have so many journals and probably need a new bin so they don’t mildew. I love writing on paper before typing stuff out; somehow I can collect my thoughts better.
The main reason I love to blog though is that it gives me a space where I can just be myself. I thought at first I needed to be a perfect blogger, but to be honest everyone’s version of perfect is different. I am an introvert when it comes to being with people, but on this blog I am a total extrovert. I love to write and sometimes I even have to tell myself, Hey this is too long, stop talking so much. But writing is just so freeing.
The Arts Are Life 