Tag Archive - encouragement for bloggers

I Need to Get Back to Whitespace for Life

May 30, 2012 in The Study with 27 Comments

I’ve been reflecting this past week on the upcoming month of June. After attending Bloggy Bootcamp, I decided to take up one of their ideas, and so I created a schedule for my blog for the month of June around a theme. I chose as my theme time and schedules. Since then, this idea just hasn’t been sitting right with me. A couple of the posts I had planned were “how to” posts. Good ideas, I’m sure, but I decided I’m not going to do that, because in my reflections, I’m realizing that is not what Project Whitespace is about.

White space should not be considered merely ‘blank’ space — it is an important element of design which enables the objects in it to exist at all, the balance between positive (or non-white) and the use of negative spaces is key to aesthetic composition (so says Wikipedia).

If you take this concept of design, and apply it to your life, then whitespace for life is the stuff that defines you, and at the same time, it is the absence of all the busyness that you LET define you, it is the stuff that give you peace and quiet, calm, and contentment in your life, and in your heart and mind. That’s whitespace for life.

I’m coming up on a year of blogging (July), and so I am working with a designer to redesign this website. It needs it! And I am so excited about it. But as she was talking to me, getting to know a little more about me and my blog, I heard myself talking about the concept of whitespace. And I realized, that’s where my heart is.

I love the idea of having whitespace in my life and talking about this concept with other bloggers. When I started this blog, that was what I was searching for: whitespace. Over the last year, I realized just writing about this and communing with other bloggers IS my whitespace. I don’t need to go any further than that. And I’ve been looking around at your blogs, and this keeps coming to me: people start blogging to get that “whitespace” in their life. Whether you are writing because you are on a journey to heal from a disastrous breakup with a spouse or significant other, or you want to start eating and living healthy, or you are a mom or dad who just needs something to yourself, or you want to lose weight and benefit from the support of others who are doing the same–we are all looking for whitespace in the writing of our blogs, aren’t we? I know I am.

Blogging gives us that place to write and flesh out our thoughts, and then to put them “out there” for others to see and comment on. The exchange of conversation that results in support, encouragement, and thought provoking musings, is all a part of creating that whitespace that we as bloggers create for ourselves, and for one another. And we create it for each other, because we long to share what we have learned from our experiences. We want to help others too.

I think, if you are blogging, you have a need for personal expression of some kind, and you choose to express it through writing. You are a writer. You need to communicate. That’s why you blog. That’s why I blog. And that’s why I am so passionate about blogging, because I see it as a way for people like me, who normally wouldn’t want to be shut up in a room writing for hours on end all by myself, to actually enjoy writing, because (and I’ve said it before) blogging brings community into writing. And that’s why I believe so strongly in the ability of blogging to help bring us into our full potential.

I’m an encourager at heart. I don’t think I’ve told anyone this, but I’ve always been able to SEE the potential an individual has. It hurts me to see the things that keep you from discovering that potential. And so, because I see the power in blogging for you, and I see your potential, that is why I want to encourage you to blog, and to keep blogging until you start seeing that potential for yourself.

So often, I go into a blog and I think “wow–this person really knows how to write”–and I’m not thinking about your grammar, or your intelligent way of putting a sentence together. I’m thinking about the way you are able to share your heart. I’m thinking about how your perspective is so different than mine and because of that, you answer questions for me without knowing it, you show me things I never thought of. I think you often don’t even realize how well you are doing all of this. You really bless me. The best way I know to give back to you, is to center in again on that whitespace, and to continue to encourage you as much as I have time to do. That’s my promise to you.

Encouragement for Bloggers

April 6, 2012 in The Study with 6 Comments

As a blogger, sometimes I get discouraged. Sometimes I wonder, “why can’t I think of anything meaningful to write?” Or, if you are like a lot of bloggers I know (not to mention, I’m probably writing about myself here), you wonder, “why don’t more people read my blog?” Or what about those times you slave over a post and you think “I spent forever on that article yesterday and hardly anybody read it, and I really wanted someone to read it. Maybe I should just give up!”

I’ve wanted to give up blogging many times. In fact, my husband and I got in a fight over my blog one day and I pulled the plug. I clicked on that little button that says “delete blog.” It warned me and warned me that this would be the last I would ever see my blog and the words in it. And I didn’t care. I had had enough. But WordPress saved me from my destructive tendencies, because they sent me an email asking if I was absolutely sure—if so, then click the link in the email. I’m glad I changed my mind and kept my blog alive.

It was right after that when my blogging started to change and I started to see direction with it. I wrote about that in my Reaching Out Means Going In and my Dream a Little Dream posts not too long ago. I’m telling you this story for a reason. Ever since I learned about blogging about eight years ago, I’ve read blogs. And I find them compelling because they are the voice of who I think of as “the regular people.” (For the most part).

This is where we have a chance to write and say whatever it is we want to, it’s where we can finally be ourselves, where we can learn about ourselves, and where we can meet other like-minded people. Writing in the freedom of a blog compels you to write more freely. And because of all this, you are more likely to write something that someone else needs to read. I am entirely convinced that when we do that, the person needing to read it will find it. Maybe not today or tomorrow. But when they need it. So don’t give up on your blog. Keep blogging away.

I would be very interested if any of you bloggers have come close to shutting down your blog. Why did you want to quit? What stopped you from quitting?