My contributions to this blog have been sporadic - at best - in recent years. There have been fits and starts, brief moments when I felt inspired and pushed something out into the universe, and moments when I withdrew again into silence.
There were a lot of reasons, I thought:
- The world has moved towards visuals, not words, and with the rise of platforms like Tik Tok the written word almost seems antiquated and heavy, and our attention span seems shortened
- The pandemic blew in like a hurricane and while bowling us over with the winds of fear quietly stole joy and with it some of the motivation to write, well, anything
- Fort McMurray has changed so much over the years, and so many of those I wrote to and for have moved on, calling new places home
- Topics seemed elusive as the world centered around the pandemic and the impacts
The world has normalized for the most part now, the pandemic becoming part of our history rather than our present. As time has elapsed and I still did not put pen to paper (or in this case fingers to keyboard) I realized a truth. None of those are the real reasons I stopped musing. I stopped musing because I stopped seeing the value in being vulnerable.
When I first started writing I did so with some tremendous naivete. I thought I would write some things, have some opinions, and both they and I would be respected even if not agreed with. The truth though is that when you share who you are or what you think, you are taking a risk because the world is not always kinds to those willing to be vulnerable. It has taken me some time to recognize that and then to move past it, to decide that being vulnerable is actually how I arrived at where I am.
However there have been many times I have sat at the keyboard and stared at it intently. Have you ever gone to start your car and you hear the small whirring noise of something but whatever it is doesn't quite click and the car doesn't start? This is what not writing feels like, too. Something is happening and the desire is there, but for some reason it just doesn't...start.
But here we are. Right at the start of 2024 and once again I am going to try to spark something here. There are things I want to say, even if I am the only person who reads them. Some are about Fort Mac, and some are not. But all of them are in some way relevant to me - and maybe to someone else.
And so....here we go, again.