My Blog Is a Toddler

It’s my two-year blog anniversary!

It’s nice that my blogiversaries are in December because they coincide with the time of the year when many of us become particularly introspective and self assessing. ‘Round these parts, it’s a dark time of year in a literal sense with the short winter days and long nights. I thrive in the darkness. The darkness is where I go when I write no matter what my physical surroundings are or what I’m writing about. I’m not afraid of the dark. It’s quiet and beautiful.

If 2010 was the year in which I allowed myself to express exactly what I was feeling, 2011 was the year of running around naked experimenting with the flexibility of language. My weekly 1 + 1 Wednesday, which I started a year ago almost to the day, was the beginning of that exploration. With the help of everyone who participated in that group activity, I gained a better understanding of the relationship between words and communication between people. Another foray was a spin in the Daisy Lemmas Riff, a fun group exercise in short story writing.

This also was the year during which I participated for the first time in National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo)–a challenge of producing a poem a day for the month of April. I posted the poems here and as each day went by felt more and more raw and exposed.  Oddly enough, it was a good feeling. I came to understand more clearly how my poetry relates to my everyday life. I also realized that over the years, the language of poetry has become second nature to me. Like many writers, there are times when I doubt myself but after NaPoWriMo–and my compiling an ebook of the poems I wrote that month, along with a running commentary–those same doubts don’t exist.

My favorite post this year? By far it was Like Love Hate. On the surface it is simply a chart of words that show what I like, love, and hate, in that order. However, by design, the reader had to figure everything out intuitively as nothing is spelled out explicitly. While some of the word groups have literal meanings with no ambiguity, others are more emotionally charged or have associations that are not immediately obvious. I spent weeks thinking about the concept before I wrote a single word, then days writing and editing it. In my heart of hearts, I consider it to be an experimental poem.

I’m really excited about my online life for the coming year, particularly a blog carnival I’m hosting called Third Sunday. I’ll talk more about it in another post: Suffice it to say that it’s an unexpected turn of events but it is also something that feels like a natural thing for me to do. I’m looking forward to seeing how it grows and evolves.

Thank you so much for reading my blog. Peace and love to you for the new year and always.

© Sweepy Jean and Sweepy Jean Explores the (Webby) World, 2011