Mental Floss

Almost since day one of this blog, people have been asking why I blog. The blog's first title is long forgotten (Crewsin' Arizona? Or was that the heading on my website home page?), but the subtitle was "So Many Men, So Little Time." I began the blog when I was cycling through a lot of short-term relationships, and dealing with the frustrations and heartaches of dating-over-50.

About 16 months after I started the blog, its focus totally changed as my son and daughter-in-law decided to move back to Youngstown, and I was forced to deal with the loss of my family. For many months in Tucson, I had babysat two or three nights a week, and hosted the grandbabes for a sleepover at least once a month. When my four-year engagement was broken, my family was my lifeline. Our Sunday night family dinners became the perfect way to end the weekend and start the new week.

Their move was devastating to me, and my sadness consumed me. Writing about it constituted, for me, therapy without the therapist. The exercise of forming my thoughts into pixelated words helped me learn how to live without them, until we all agreed that my best life (and, I hope, theirs) was for me to be nearby and continue my support role in their life.

The blog's focus then changed, along with its name. I asked readers for input, and from all the suggestions, chose "Amazing Adventures: Tales from a Mid-Life Renaissance." Friends had long been encouraging me to write about my life—about the adoption and the music and the marriages and the circuitous path. In leaving Tucson, I had, once again, started over from scratch with my life, taking on a new and foreign geography, leaving behind friendships developed over the previous seven years. Changing, at age 57.5, everything.

The blog gave me continuity. Tucson friends who loved and missed me read my writing every day to keep me in their lives. New friends and acquaintances began reading, to get to know me better. And post topics would swirl through my head daily. Documenting them enabled me to bring peace to my busy brain, reeling from all the upheaval.

When I go back to the early posts in 2006 and contrast them to recent posts, I am thrilled with how much my writing has improved. My facility with words is freer now, with the search for the perfect word being both challenging and rewarding, a most enjoyable game. I have grown as a writer, through the simple act of writing.

But the timing is also interesting. I find that when I write late at night, I'm too tired to craft clever sentences. But when I write upon arrival at the office, after forming the entire post in my head while driving, the act of writing tends to jumpstart my creativity for the rest of the day. The technical words I write, following after the creativity session, flow more freely and feel less pedantic, less tedious and routine.

I've often encouraged people who like to write to begin a blog. It's not a matter of what you have to give to the cyberworld. It's not about how many readers you'll have. It's about how you'll grow, how your thoughts will develop, how your brain will activate more completely for listening to all the words flying around inside your head.

And, for me, it's also kinda nice that my friends know me better, despite the pace of our lives and the difficulty of making time for each other. Many long e-mail conversations begin just out of someone reading something that was irresistible to them. For me, my work in this venue is rewarding.