WillSpirit!

Time to turn over a new blog leaf. Watching the growth in readership stall, and then the numbers start to dwindle, has happened twice since I began this blog (effectively July 1). Both times occurred after I went nuts and wrote really long posts that had only a little to do with mental health. My tag-line is ‘Just another Mental Health and Spirituality Blog’, but the sites I visit are almost all mental health oriented. So far I’ve not found a spiritual blog community that would be receptive to my biologically-based views on ‘God’. Given that the conversation I’m entering revolves around psychiatric issues of one kind or another, I will try to keep my blog in line with that topic. You all are teaching me what interests you or, more to the point, what doesn’t. In the future I will put the long posts about memoir-related or spiritual topics on webpages separate from the main blog, and then just provide the links for those (few) who are intrigued. I also plan to (once again) try to keep the posts shorter. I’m not sure what my cut-off should be. Maybe under 600 words?

With this new resolve, and the fact that I am typing better today, my mood has improved. My left ring finger, wrapped in gauze, has the sensitivity and accuracy of an elbow. But it’s only real job is typing ‘s’ (‘w’ comes up rarely, and ‘x’ almost never); with practice, I am learning to get it right. As usual, my spirits bounce back when I accept things as they are. I need to be OK with my minor injury, and not hate myself for all it seems to imply about my loss of dexterity, trouble coming off Cymbalta, etc. (The things I whined about in my last post.) I need to recognize that blog stats are just numbers, and not the same as people. I need to be satisfied with having one or two commenters say they enjoyed a post. After all, that rewards me far more than when AwStats shows a large number of ‘visitors’ who may just be web-bots for all I know. I need to get used to the fact that my blog project will not take off immediately, may never take off, and that ‘taking off’ is not the goal anyway.

Like all of us, I have concerns about finding financial security. But the joy I get out of writing, and out of communicating with others who share my concerns, has nothing to do with money. I need to hold on to that truth, and not get distracted by my anxiety about paying the bills. As is so often the case, the rewards this task has brought me are different from the ones I hoped for. The large number of fine blogs, the difficulty in attracting attention, and the frustration of realizing people don’t want to hear my ‘loftiest’ ideas have made it obvious that notoriety and financial success are unlikely. On the other hand, I’ve made contact with special and sensitive people of like attitudes, and I am now writing far more than ever before. Even to someone with chronic desires for high-achievement (tempered only a little by a decade of failure), who was raised to value status and ‘winning’ over relationships and helping, those seem like pretty good results. Thank you to all of you who have helped me find this treasure.