If you have followed this blog for any length of time, then you have read of my struggles to be steady and consistent in my writing habits. I can recall nearly a dozen attempts at a weekly features or ongoing series – all ideas geared toward forming a steady rhythm of posts.
The desire to write is seldom the issue. I would enjoy spending hours each day on the task. In addition, the quest for ideas to develop into posts is rarely the struggle. Every day involves a number of thoughts that might prove worthy of further development.
With those two things expressed, I suppose the writing struggle lives in the space between idea and action. Forming thoughts into words involves mental grunt work, even if you love that particular type of grunting. There is the risk that a thought you believed had value turns into a post that isn’t actually worth much at all. There’s a possibility that something important to you elicits no response from readers, silently confirming that you are further out to lunch than you feared.
But writers write all the same.
How to proceed?
As I considered what the new year might hold for me, I determined that beyond particular resolutions or specific habits, I desire 2015 to be a year of learning. I’m not speaking of a learning that might feel burdensome, accompanied by heavy expectations and heady efforts. Rather I envision a year in which I increasingly open my ears to learn from all the wisdom-sources that surround me: Books, people, stories, experiences, children, music, films, and more. Even simpler, it’s amazing what can be discovered in a stripped-down moment of tuning in to one’s own body or thoughts or emotions.
Forecasting a year of learning, I dare to dream that a few items worth sharing might arise. I would also venture to guess that those gems will be scattered among posts as mundane as a link to a video or song or site that is proven meaningful to me. Whatever the case, perhaps a simple pattern of posting things learned – from the biggest to smallest – along my wandering-and-wondering ways might provide me with a year-long framework on which to hang my blogging habits for the next calendar year.
Without further ado, I proclaim 2015 the “Year of Learning” here at Wandering & Wondering.
