The blank page has never been an enemy to me. My whole life I have had so much to write that I wrote in notebooks until my hand cramped, and later I poured out dated journals in Word files, wrote long “treatise on life” e-mails to my best friend, blog posts baring myself to strangers.

I had everything to get out about everything.

Yesterday and today I sat down with the intent of doing my work – writing.

Staring into that blank page felt like looking down the barrel of a cannon. Nothing here, seems like, but man if something comes it might just tear me apart.

Someone, at the height of my blog, when I felt like things were really getting rolling for me, asked me a question. She asked, “but what’s the point of a blog? Why are you writing all of this about yourself, and putting it out on the internet for strangers to read?”

For two years I had no answer for her. My answer at the time was, “I don’t put my whole life out there. I am not an open book. I choose what to share, and I don’t share anything that I’d be ashamed to talk to about to your face.” Because that makes it seem like I am sensible, like I know what I am doing, like I am not some little weirdo putting all of my guts out into the world.

I let her little question become a cloud, and eventually it became solid cloud cover. But today I realized, even cloud cover goes away if a good stiff wind blows through.

That wind is going to have to be me, this time. I do this because I can. Because when I don’t know what to do, and I feel weird and bad, the clacking of keys soothes me. Because I feel like I am sitting down with a good friend and hashing out my life questions. Because, when I sit down with this blank post window, I never, ever know what’s going to come out until it’s there in front of me.

And because it’s mine. It’s my thing, and if there is one lesson I hope I learn soon, it’s that if you have a thing, you HAVE to do it. Life doesn’t work right if you don’t.

For a lot of my life, I have let self-doubt and general weirdness and depression keep me silent. I felt like life was in the way, I felt like my dreams were too big and too nutty, I felt like the person I was becoming didn’t actually have a place in the world, so I needed to knock it off and pick a different path. I’m letting that all go now, in case you were wondering. I’m starting over.