On Starting the Blog

I am sitting in an Italian restaurant in a small tourist town situated on a large river, surrounded by the reds, yellows, browns, and oranges of autumn, and sipping a glass of Chianti. It is time. I face the window looking out at the street, I face the hibiscus plants that have been brought inside to bloom, I face the empty chairs across from me and I realize, I need to start writing this blog.

I have long been reluctant to join the blogger phenomenon. As a writer in an MFA program, I have stuck to my journals, my short stories, my assignments and have shirked this immediate form of response between writer and audience. Why? Why have I avoided a format that can only help me improve my craft? 

For one there is the problem that I have been brought up in a family where the strict, unspoken, unacknowledged code is to glorify the family, bury the problems, and speak truth selectively. We are to portray the best, garner accolades, and smile graciously, always, even if that smile is the thin veneer covering a massive wound, a heart split open with a serrated knife. A blog is a dangerous thing under such expectations; surely the stories will begin to leak out.

The other problem is that I imagine I have little to say that interests the general audience at-large, whoever these readers might be. Could anyone possibly want to know that I am eating pasta at a restaurant next to two Russian women who are speaking in low tones and leaning into each other as they sip coffee and toy with water glasses, that the waitress who served me conspiratorially told me the wi-fi password and smiled in congratulations when I ordered a glass of wine, that I am tempted right now to take my new favorite pen and scrawl terrible poetry over the brown paper tablecloth? These are not fascinating topics. They are topics, I think, for me alone to enjoy.

And alone I am. Is that why I am finally starting my blog? Because the stability of a marriage and a sense of "we" has vanished from life in this past year? Perhaps I long for community and connections. Perhaps I am reaching out with network fibers to touch the technological souls of others. Perhaps I am merely distracting myself from the vacuous spaces in my heart- the gaping holes of loneliness that I dress up daily in fishnet tights, tall boots and sweater dresses, and hide behind carefully straightened hair and eyeliner. 

Perhaps a blog is a place where I can be myself and feel what I want, even if I hide behind a pseudonym, crouch behind a secret identity, hidden amongst the reds, the oranges, the browns, and the yellows of autumn.