Tag Archives: Blogging

Silent Letters

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Must your every thought and word be heard? I’m afraid my generation and the generations growing up behind me think so. We share everything—on Facebook, on Twitter, in our blogs, through Instagrams. And then we wait for a reaction—for the likes, comments, and all the pretty little stats that tell us we are good, we are heard. It’s a drug, an addiction—a hit that sends endorphins flooding through our brains, lighting up the part of us thirsting for attention and affirmation.

And we find the silence becomes deafening because we just can’t live without the noise, the reaction, the endorphins flooding in and telling us we are heard, we are good.

And we lose the beauty of silence, the sacredness of solitude.

Sometimes our souls need to be alone.

Sometimes we can only begin to hear in the hush.

Sometimes words need to be written but not read.

Sometimes beauty needs to be seen but not captured or shared.

Sometimes we just need to live quietly in a moment or we will lose ourselves in the noise.

My soul needs some silent letters—words written but not shared. Letters penciled into my journal for the soul, not for the reaction. Letters tapped out on my typewriter slowly, carefully with the heavy stoke of each letter hammered in ink to paper—just for me.

Letters and words good and valuable…and ever so quiet….quiet enough to be heard by the soul.

Because not everything I am must be known. Not everything I say must be heard.

My soul needs silence. Solitude. Words written and not read.

Otherwise I will drown and lose myself in the noise.

hampton-beach-2011-121Can your soul find silence? Can you walk away from the noise?

For the Love of Words

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Words are the pixels that put together an understandable picture of my world. Words are the brushstrokes in a masterpiece—the fine lines, nearly meaningless alone, culminating in beauty and understanding together.

I simply love words.

I sit down at my computer and start typing—slowly at first, and then the flood comes over me. Words stream and flow, bubble up and mingle—until, at last, I step back from the strokes and see the picture. I see beauty. I see creation. I see a part of myself in black ink on the page.

Sometimes I feel like god when I write and can make all those unruly letters do and say whatever I want. Just like God in the beginning when he spoke—when He said the words “Let it be”—and it was.

So I speak, “Let it be”—and it is. Letters, pictures, stories, truth, emotion—all painted together onto the blank canvas of a page. All coming from nothing as the cursor gives birth to word after word. Words turned to sentences. Sentences to paragraphs. Paragraphs to the page. The page to a story. The story to a life all its own—a world, a place that never was before the words came together and said it is so.

I love words. I love blank pages. Blankness is merely a call to creation. Something out of nothing. Worlds out of words.

But sometimes I forget how much I love words. Sometimes I think the worth of words is entirely in the number of likes and responses those words receive. Sometimes I write something I love—something of myself that I gave up to the page. And even though  I loved the words, others do not. And I start to think the words lost their meaning. I start to think the words are no good. I think of quitting. I think it’s too hard. I only think these things because I forgot.

I forgot how much I loved the words.

I loved the words as they percolated and came together in my brain. I loved the words as I gave birth to them on the page. I loved the creation from something out of nothing.

And really, that should be enough. The words and the love I have for them—not the love they receive from others.

So, today, I start again with this blank canvas—this empty vastness yearning for creation. Something out of nothing.

I write because I love writing. I love the words. I love the blankness. I love the fine strokes of creation.

Even if you don’t like them too. That’s okay. Because I can’t leave the canvas blank. I can’t leave the cursor….cursing? I can’t. I have to write. I have to create.

Maybe I just like feeling like god for a few hours in the day.

Writing with Sincerity

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The world of writing is saturated. Words and opinions fall like so many drops of rain until the streets are flooded and the words have nowhere else to go.

Everyone wants to be heard and understood. Everyone wants to have value. So we write to be heard, to be valued and understood. But there is so much to take in, so many voices clambering one over the other. How am I going to be heard over the masses? What sets me apart from them? What makes my words worth hearing over the words of someone else?

I speak and no one listens. The silence makes me panic. So I plot and connive. I think of ways to be heard. I read the Freshly Pressed posts and develop an algorithm called “How to Get Freshly Pressed in 90 Seconds or Less.” I read all the articles about boosting traffic and growing readership.

And I cheat myself out of the truth.

I write shallow words to get a reaction and a boost in statistics. Sometimes the games work. Sometimes I feel good about myself because I get people to look at me and the numbers tell me I had a good day. But then, a month later, six months later, I read the words I wrote and their shallow trickery echoes off the walls. And I know I cheated. I cheated you and I cheated myself into believing cheap easy words were good enough so long as I got a reaction, so long as the numbers told me I had a good day.

When I’m honest with myself, I know the words I’ve written with the most sincerity are often the words with the least reaction from readers. It sucks to speak from the heart and not be heard. But when I read back over the words written from my heart, the words that printed my soul onto paper, those are the words that really matter. Those are the words that show me who I was, am, and am becoming. Those are the words that, even if ignored by others, will last and matter when the stats are forgotten and the euphoria of being noticed has faded away.

Why do I write? To be heard? Yes. But I realize now, finally, that I write not only to be heard by you, dear reader, but to be heard by myself. I write to hear myself speak out the breathings of my heart. I write to understand what doesn’t make sense until I can read it back in words articulate. I write to remember. To remember what I was thinking and feeling in a different time and place. I write to see who I was and better understand who I am becoming. I write because I can’t stop the words, however ignored or misunderstood they may be—I must put the words down in ink to know and remember. I write not just for you, but for me too. If we are to know and remember then cheap words won’t do.

Donald Miller said:

“The writing life really is like farming. If you keep planting and harvesting the soil without letting it rest, the crops suffer. In an age where everybody is competing for attention, a sense of panic can set in and we end up producing material that feels rushed and forced and written from a place of desperation rather than creative inspiration. But quality will win in the long run. And to create quality, you have to let the soil recover.”

I won’t cheat you or myself with cheap words written out of “desperation rather than creative inspiration.”

This is no game.

These are the breathings of my heart.

“I love you, and because I love you, I would sooner have you hate me for telling you the truth than adore me for telling you lies.” Pietro Aretino

How Reading Taught Me to Write

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I had a lot of trouble learning how to read when I was a kid. I don’t remember how old I was when I finally put the words together, I just remember being the very last kid who could make her way through the jungle of words in a book. None of it made sense to me. I couldn’t grasp how the letters and sounds were supposed to come together and actually mean something. I thought I was stupid and really believed there was something wrong with me. I believed I would never be smart like other people. I hated reading. I hated books. I hated words. I couldn’t spell. I couldn’t even pronounce words correctly. I avoided books and reading because they reminded me of how stupid I thought I was and brought to my attention everything I wasn’t good at.

I was a physical kid—always outside climbing trees and building forts with my brothers. I didn’t want to sit still and learn anything. I believed I couldn’t learn and that I wasn’t smart enough to understand like other people.

But then when I was 11 I picked up a book called The Penny Whistle by B. J. Hoff and something changed inside of me. I have no idea why I picked that book up or cracked it open because it wasn’t something I normally did. I remember loving the illustrations in the book—crisp, detailed pencil drawings that looked like you could touch the page and get graphite on your fingers; perhaps that’s what drew me in. Regardless, it was the words that kept me. Finally, for the first time in my life, words made sense; they ran off the page like water and I drank them up—consumed them one by one to the very last page.

I pulled The Penny Whistle off my bookshelf today—it’s tattered with a piece of tape on the cover. My name is written in black marker on the inside cover with the date July 18, 1997. I flipped through the pages and found the grubby fingerprints off an 11-year-old throughout. The book falls open to my favorite illustration of a tree standing stark against a winter backdrop.

When I held that book today I actually had to stop and take a deep breath to fight back tears. Why? Because that simple little book changed my life. I don’t even remember what the book is really about; the story is lost but the change it brought inside of me remains. When I poured over that book as an 11-year-old girl, I found something inside of myself. I found words. I found ability and intelligence. I found stories. I came alive and knew I had value, capability, and something to share. I went from hating books to loving them—loving the stories held inside two covers. I fell in love with words and began to see them as colors on a palette and the blank page as my canvas. There, reading that book, I fell in love with writing.

When I was a teenager, I remember being sick and bored one day so I cracked open Daddy-Long-Legs by Jean Webster. The name Daddy-Long-Legs amused me and, for no other reason, I started reading. I read the whole book that day without ever putting it down. I’m not an avid reader even now so it means something when I can’t part with a story until it’s finished. I gobbled up each book by Webster and learned one important thing from her stories—the writer’s voice. I don’t know how to describe Jean Webster—her imagination, her childishness, her sharp sense of humor—she wrote like she was having a witty conversation with each of her readers. I fell in love with her style and find now that my own voice in writing grew out of the whimsy I so love in her books.

Even though I struggled through school and language has always been a challenge for me, I have found that reading is the best lesson I ever learned in writing. In reading, I actually see the way language is laid out on a page in sentences and paragraphs. Instead of just hearing about and practicing the proper construction of individual sentences and parts of speech, I can actually visualize and grasp sentence structure as I read. The more I read, the more I learn about writing. The more I write, the more I want to read and learn more and more from the words and characters acting out the world of grammar on the page. I may never be a very good student. I may never be able to fully understand the complexities of the English language. But I do know the more I read the words of good writers, the better writer I too can be.

“The problem was too big for the lot of them. But her mother always maintained that you had to start where you were or you’d never get anywhere at all” (p. 37, The Penny Whistle).

Blogging and Being Yourself

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Today is my baby blog’s first birthday! I can’t believe my baby is growing up :]

It was a slow-going endeavor when I first started blogging. I had but a handful of readers (mostly related to me) and in those early days, one of my first thoughts in writing was always, “how can I get more readers?” Even then, I didn’t write just to be read; I write because I love doing so. I love words and the click, click, click of the words as they’re typed into existence.

Still, even though I love writing just for the pleasure of the words themselves, I would be lying if I said I didn’t care about having readers. If I wanted to write only for myself, I would journal not blog. I blog to share what I love with other people but to do that, well dang it, you need readers! So plan and connive I did and slowly, ever so slowly, the readers came. But then, once I had bright eyes watching for my words, I panicked a little bit. I thought about all the different interests and backgrounds of all the different people reading and drove myself crazy trying to decide what I could possibly write that would interest so many lovely people. Let me tell you what I’ve learned in this first year:

  • Speak in Your Natural Voice: As quirky, sarcastic, or misunderstood as it may be sometimes, I try to speak in my natural voice and write just the same way I talk. Hold on–it’s a bumpy ride sometimes <8[
  • Write What You Know, Know What You Write: It’s not a new idea–it’s probably one of the oldest rules in the book–but writing from my own experience and perspective always works best. When I think something I want to share is too boring to post, I just remind myself of how much I love reading about other people’s normal lives and activities and hope my readers will be interested in my normal life too–which brings me to the next point…
  • Readers Come, Readers Go: I get excited every time I get a new reader…and about two minutes later I get bummed when I lose a reader. I’ve learned readers will come and go at their own leisure–and that’s okay. If I’m being myself and being honest, then not everyone is going to love everything I have to say and that may mean losing readers sometimes. I just remind myself there’s no point in having numbers if those numbers don’t represent individual readers who want to be here. If they’re not interested, let them go and focus on the ones who stay.
  • You Won’t Make Every Reader Happy Every Time: Some posts are going to be more popular than others and no, you can’t decide which ones people will love. Some people love every word that percolates in your brain; others want only to hear about coffee, music, or cats–deal with it and keep typing about whatever it is that comes floating by your cortex.
  • Be Open and Honest: The times when I’ve been most vulnerable and shared stuff that scared me are also the times I best connected with my readers. No one wants to read about someone else’s perfect life all the time. People identify and connect with honesty, humility, and struggle so tell the truth.
  • Find a Platform: People won’t know I’m writing or know where to find my blog if I don’t tell them. Self-promoting can feel a little vain but there’s just no other way to get your voice out there unless you speak up and tell people to come join the party. I started by sharing each new posts on my Facebook page and of course Twitter and other social media sites are great resources too. Network with other bloggers and don’t be afraid to share what you’re doing–I mean, that’s the point right?
  • Talk to Yourself: If the idea of having an audience starts getting in the way, I step back and pretend I’m writing just for myself–like I’m journaling.
  • Don’t Give Up: Blogging can get discouraging–when you pour your heart out on the page and it feels like no one is listening or you hit a road block and can’t think of two words to smack together. But like life, you won’t succeed by walking away discouraged so hang in there.
  • Relax and Have Fun: Blogging is fun, sooooo, you should be having fun! Relax and enjoy the writing you love!
  • Be Yourself: All of this amounts to one thing in my mind–being myself. I can’t make people like me, I can’t force them to read my blog, I can’t share what I don’t know. All I can do is be who I am and share what I know and love. And the beautiful thing about writing is, it has really helped me better know and discover who I am.

It’s been a great first year, kids :] How about you? How do you manage to be yourself even when others are watching and reading your words?

Words are Knowledge

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I am just old enough to remember life before the internet and cell phones. I grew up playing outside, not on the computer. I wasn’t on Facebook or the owner of a cell phone until I was in college. I rarely text and am probably slower than my grandma (who is super tech savvy, by the way) when I do.

Still, technology and the hyper-connectivity of the world around me have changed the way I interact and relate to people. Like so many my age, I am more comfortable communicating by means of blogging and Facebooking than I am in face-to-face interactions. Not that I can’t have an intelligent face-to-face conversation, but I am better able to open up and speak my heart through writing than I am in talking.

Words are my world, they are my voice and the best way I know how to share my heart and person with others.

Because I am sharing my heart and who I am when I write, it means a lot to me when people read my writing; their reading communicates interest in who I am and what I have to say. On the flip side, when people show no interest in my writing, to some extent that makes me feel they aren’t interested in knowing me. Not that I expect everyone to read my blog–not everyone has the time or interest and blogging isn’t the best way to build relationships with each and every person in my life. But when someone says they want to know me better and expresses no interest in what I have to say, I think, “you say you want to know me, I have put myself out there in my writing to be known, and yet you act like what I’ve written means nothing to you–do you really want to know me better or are you just saying that?”

In the same way, I say I want to know God better; I say I want to have a better relationship with him and better know his heart–and then fail to read his words to me. This struck me quite hard the other day: I want people to know me better through my writing and feel they aren’t interested in me when they don’t read what I’ve written. God wants me to know him better and has spoken his heart to me through the written word–the Bible–and yet I fail to read his words (therefore communicating a total lack of interest in knowing him better).

I love the written word, I love the way words can be combined and moved around to say what you want just the way you want. Why, if I love words so much and put so much value into my own words being read, do I not value the words of God? I say I want to know him but my actions say otherwise. God has chosen to share himself with me in the way I love most–through words. The words of God are beautiful and powerful and have changed who I am completely. You may not believe in the Bible–in the words of God. I do. I believe in God’s words with all my heart and live my life based on this belief. I am moved to value God’s words more and make reading his words a priority in my life. If I really want to know God, then I must read what he has shared with me about himself through the written word.

How about you–how do you feel when people do or don’t read your words or listen to what you say?

How I Came to Rule the Known World

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Okay, so maybe I don’t exactly rule the known world but that is exactly how I felt when I was Pressed. I am honestly so humbled and overwhelmed by all the encouragement and support I received from so many of you. Thank you, each of you, for taking the time to stop by, read, and leave feedback. Every “like” felt like a fist bump. Every comment felt like a hug. And now I feel like a million bucks! Your words gave me the push I needed to keep writing and to move forward with my blog so thank you again! I look forward to stopping by your blogs and getting to know you better as we move forward together in our little blogging community. I dare say I am falling in love with each and every one of you. I love you I say! You see what kind of rubbish you will have to put up with if you keep reading my blog? You’ve been warned 8]

Love, Kari

What Blogging Has Taught Me

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I was kind of cynical about starting a blog back in the day but I’m glad I did—here’s why:

  • Blogging makes me see my life differently: Ever since I started blogging, I’ve seen my life as a story I’m telling other people. Because I want to tell a good story I’m always on the lookout for the funny, the silly, the beautiful, the meaningful—the moments that help me connect with others and share my story in a way that interest them. Before I started blogging, taking a bike ride or spending the day at the ocean would have been simple, quickly forgotten events. Now a day at the ocean is the opportunity to share a story, to take pictures, and to come back with something to share that connects me with the people I love and people I’ve never met. Blogging helps me see the simple beauty in my life—the beauty and excitement in my own quiet story.
  • Blogging helps me work through and hash out my thoughts and feelings: Blogging has forced me to think longer and harder about all the thoughts that race through my brain. If I want to clearly communicate something to other people then I have to clarify it for myself first.
  • Blogging gives me a sense of accomplishment and perseverance: Every time something I’ve written is “liked” or commented on or even just clicked on and the little stats bar goes up and up, I get a sense of having achieved something, however small. I also get a sense of perseverance because there are days (like today) where I stare at the screen and don’t know what to write and just have to start typing anyway. Or there are days when I think I’ve written something earth shattering that will be Freshly Pressed the second I grace the world by pressing “Publish” and instead it sits there stagnate getting almost no hits and no feedback. So much for being the next great American writer and it’s back to another blank screen for another try at a better post.
  • Blogging brings me closer to people: I live across the country from my most of my family and friends and blogging helps me share my life with them from a distance. Blogging also helps me connect with new people and connect on a deeper level with people I have known for years. Blogging has even allowed me to mend and restore broken friendships.
  • Blogging helps me better communicate: I’m kind of quiet and insecure when I’m talking to people in person so writing really helps me communicate the thoughts and feelings I have a hard time getting across otherwise.
  • Blogging makes me a better writer: Blogging helps me understand who my audience is and what they are interested in. The stats provided by WordPress are an extraordinary help in knowing what topics are reaching people and what is falling flat.
  • Blogging connects me with people and stories that I never would have encountered otherwise: I read so much interesting stuff and meet so many interesting people on WordPress! There are so many great blogs to follow—I could sit in front of the computer reading all day. Sometimes I just have to shut the computer and make myself go do something else or I’ll peruse blogs all day :]

That is a list of 7 things not 10. I never promised 10 you know and I don’t know why 10 is supposed to be the perfect number anyway; I’ve always preferred 7 :]

So, why do you blog? What have you learned from putting your thought out there for the whole world to read? If you don’t blog, why not?

“We read to know that we are not alone.” C.S. Lewis

The Importance of Being Important

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Lord, I’ll do whatever you want (as long as it’s important).

When I was in high school I really thought I would end up going on the mission field. I thought I would move overseas and take the world by storm. I often prayed and told the Lord that I would go anywhere and do anything (except stay in America and help in a boring local church). I wanted to do big things for God. But that was just the problem–I only wanted to do big things. I wanted to do important, life-changing work…not just sit in the pew of a local church and help with the nursery or children’s church or other unexciting, “unimportant” stuff like that.

It’s kind of ironic, but it was much harder for me to be willing to stay in America and live a quiet comfortable life just working and doing normal things than it ever was to surrender to foreign missions and all the dangers and inconveniences that missions entail. Looking back, I see that my desire to do big things for God wasn’t even about God–it was about me. It was about me feeling important and me getting attention and fulfillment. The test was not whether I was willing to give my life to missions; it was whether I was willing to give my life to the quiet, unnoticed work before me. Will I be willing to work a normal job and take care of our home? Will I be satisfied and content if my life’s work is making dinner and doing behind the scenes work at a small local church? If I’m not satisfied with the small, unnoticed tasks before me, then I’m not doing any task for the right reason. If my motivation is to get attention or to feel important, then I’m not really serving God even if I am noticed.

The same is true with my writing. I often think that if my writing doesn’t get attention then it’s worthless. But is that really what it’s about? WordPress has this handy little stat bar that lets you see when someone visits your site or clicks on something you wrote. This bar is a great help in gaging what topics interest people and such but I can get obsessed with the silly little thing. After I’ve published something, I’m bad about coming back to the computer every few minutes to see if my stats have gone up and to see if anyone is commenting on or liking what I’ve written. I get carried away with the numbers–the attention and the sense of importance. If I’m writing what’s on my heart with the intention of glorifying God and encouraging others, then stats shouldn’t matter one bit. If something I write encourages just one person and no one else even looks at it then I should be satisfied to know that God has accomplished what he intended and it doesn’t matter how popular I do or don’t get in the process.

The truth is, no matter what the stats look like on a little bar, I will never really know the impact of my life or my writing–and it doesn’t matter. My job is simply to be faithful in doing what’s before me. The impact of what I do is fully in the hands of God. If God wants to use me, he can–but he certainly doesn’t have to. Truth be told, God doesn’t need our help in accomplishing his work. It is a gift to us that God ever chooses to use us. So if God gives me a small, seemingly unimportant task, I should do it happily, faithfully, and with a sense of honor. Who am I to complain about importance when it really should be such a humbling honor that God ever chooses to include me in his creative work?

Editing Your Life

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Today I decided to add a more detailed “About Me” section to the blog and while doing so started thinking about the interesting ways we edit our lives for people. When I share something here on the blog or on Facebook I only share what I want people to see and know–the funny stories, the deep thoughts, the best pictures. I don’t tell people the stuff about me and my life that I don’t want them to know. I don’t post the pictures that are unflattering, or heaven forbid me without makeup. Nope, it’s just the good stuff. If my life were just the stuff I present here on the blog and on Facebook, then it would appear that life is pretty perfect. I mean, I have this great husband, I live in this beautiful place, we go do fun exciting things together, I have a great job and lots of independence–life is perfect–or is it?

I really can’t complain about life, that much is true, but it’s certainly not all quiet dates and exciting adventures; most of the time it’s doing the laundry and sitting in an office working. It’s dotted with excitement and the dots are the parts you see. You don’t see me when I roll out of bed in the morning looking like a sea monster, you don’t see me when I’m having a bad attitude because I didn’t get what I wanted or because I’m just in a bad mood. I never make my Facebook status something like, “Just said something hurtful to the husband because I’m self-absorbed and don’t care if I hurt him” even though that’s exactly the truth far too often.

What I tell you about myself is true but it’s not all the truth; it’s the edited version–the version I want you to see.

I think with all the social networking we do these days, it’s more important than ever to remember just how much our lives are edited. If we don’t remember this then we might look at other people’s lives and envy how perfect it all seems. We might think someone else’s life is so beautiful and happy and full of excitement and mine is full of dirty dishes, crying babies, or long days at the office. Instead of seeing the simple beauty of my own life and realizing that all I have is a gift from God, I might start wanting what someone else has–and never even realize that what they have is only a small part of the story–the part of the story they let me see and nothing of the hurt, sadness, or monotony that is kept tidy and quiet away from the world of Facebook.

There is a girl in my life that intimidates the heck out of me. She is beautiful and charming and everyone loves being around her. I look at her sometimes and feel like a complete loser. I feel like I will never be as put together and wonderful as she is. I’ll never curl my hair every day or always show up in high heels looking amazing like amazing just follows me around. Nope, I’ll be the dorky girl with the ponytail and boat shoes because that is the extent of my fashion ambition. My inner monologue is horrifying when I’m around her. But then on days like today I remind myself that I’ve only seen her in public when all is well and she is in her best clothes. I haven’t seen her when she’s only with the people who know her best and she feels safe letting her guard down. I haven’t seen her flaws because she isn’t showing them to me. If she doesn’t have any flaws then I will poke my eyes out but for now I’m just going to assume that she is actually as imperfect as the rest of us and is just good at editing the bad stuff out in public. I can’t be her–and truth be told, if I saw the whole picture, I probably wouldn’t want to be.