Writing Affirmation

Yesterday, a colleague from a past workplace told me that he admired my blogging practice.  He said that he had started a blog, but just never really wrote much.

I thought about how my blogging has changed.  I keep two blogs, and once, I wrote a separate blog piece for each one, and I did this almost every day.  When I first started out, I rarely recycled anything I wrote--once I had written a blog piece, I didn't rerun it.

Back then, more of us were reading blogs.  Back then, I had more time, or I felt like I did.  Now I'm more gentle with myself.  Now I've been blogging over 10 years, so some pieces are worth giving everyone a second (or third or fourth) chance to read.

My writing time this morning is limited, but before I close, let me record this interesting nugget.  On Saturday, my mom told me about a church friend of hers who remembered me from 2016 when I was up to help lead their women's retreat.

The church friend was talking to a woman who teaches at William and Mary, and they were talking about poetry.  The William and Mary teacher said she had a book to recommend--and it was one of my chapbooks!  My mom's friend recognized my name.

What are the odds of that?!!!  Who do I know at William and Mary?  How else might my little chapbooks have made their way there?

There are days that I'm amazed at what I've been able to do with my writing.  And there's always the part of me that wonders if I might be in a different place right now if I had done more in terms of building platforms and trying to get my work even further out into the world.

But for today, let me record my delight in the fact that a former colleague remembers me as a blogger and that an unknown person recommended my book to a friend of my mom.