Ashes: Lent 2010

Today is (was) Ash Wednesday. While I rarely dwell on my religious views/ practices, etc, my faith is something very prominent in my life. I am a practicing Catholic who goes to mass every Sunday. And there are many different reasons to go to mass on Sundays. But I digress. Very often I think up blog posts in my head and somehow from the time I thought about it to the time that I sit at the computer everything I had to say becomes lost in some vacuum in my head. Somewhere with the two more hours I should have slept and the exercise routine which would have given me more energy to keep going. I'm going to write a few things that I've been wanting to clarify--for me--not for you, my readers. As most bloggers, I often think of you and wonder what you want to me to write about, what your interests might be. And for a long time I've struggled with this battle of the you vs. me. Of course, this is a battle entirely in my head, as you have never participated in it. And across the blogosphere there are certainly both types of bloggers, just as there are writers, those who write for their audience and those who write for themselves, or perhpas out of some internal need for expression. I have bounced back and forth between the two. At times, I follow all the rules of blogging, i.e. visit and leave comments on all the blogs that visited your blog, reply promptly to all comments, list those bloggers on your blogroll, etc. But all this is can be very exhausting in today's blogosphere with new blogs popping up everyday. In that world I find it very easy to lose sight of any goals I had established.
So I've come up with a plan for Lent. 40 days of internal reflection. 40 days in which I will write--not at the end of the day and risk being too tired to write anything, but at the start of each day. Whatever is on my mind. No writing for an audience. No writing for networking or self-promotion, just writing what is in my heart. Right here, right now. So if you are a fellow blogger, be assured that I will visit your blog--after Lent is over. I promise. If you are not a fellow blogger and are just a person who has so far enjoyed reading my blog, I can only hope that you like the "reflective me" just as much as you loved my house renovations and buying trips, its just another part of who I am while dancing through paris. See you tomorrow.