Blogging = Hope

Thanks to despair.com for providing me with what I feel is a suitable picture for my first post.

If you know me at all, you know my fear of blogging. The pressure. The writing up of all the minutia of my day. The public typos. The confirmation that I’m not a great writer. The fact that now EVERYONE will know that I overuse the words “very”, “really”, and “actually”.

But still...I want a blog. Many of my friends live far away from me, and blogs seem to be a practical way to maintain a line of communication. Maintaining friendships is important, you know? I feel like I probably have more baggage than the average person, so if I let you see my dirty laundry we are friends for life. I think blogging might help long-distance friendships.

The thing that really gets me is the pressure I feel to write once the blog has been established. What if I don’t have anything to say? I don’t want to be someone who writes a bunch of useless junk just to say I’ve updated the blog. I also don’t want to be someone who never updates. What’s a girl to do? (I know, I know...I’m over-thinking it. I can’t help it. It’s what I do.)

That’s where the happy feet idea comes in. While on vacation in Florida, I got the idea that I could take pictures of my feet in places that make me happy. Then I could post those pictures on a blog, which would provide a platform for me to write as much or as little as I want. It gives me something to post about, and it also encourages me to be emotionally present enough to realize I’m doing something that makes me happy. I’ve spent most of my life feeling relatively numb, so being emotionally present is challenging for me. And risky. And terrifying.

But this happy feet thing? This is something I can do. I’m sure that sometimes it will be gritty and dark, because I’m gritty and dark. And I’m certain that it will be funny, because I’m funny. In the end, I just want it to be real, and hopeful. Not because that’s who I am all the time, but because that’s who I want to be.