I heard David Sedaris today on Fresh Air. The interview talked about his latest book and on how he became a writer.
He started writing at 20 and said that he had no inclination to write before that time. One day, he didn't write and the next, he was a writer. It all began that easily.
I have been mulling over a year end entry for some time now. Although the first entries of this blog were written in October of 2003, I left it and came back to it in February of this year. I would not be so presumptuous as to say that now I am a writer. I'm not, really. I still have trouble saying what I mean and I don't even touch some topics here as I feel inarticulate or inadequate to say what I mean.
What I will say, and what the Sedaris interview made me think about is what I have become this year.
I began this year watching my father breathe. He had a pulmonary embolism on New Year's Eve and at 1am I met my family at the hospital. I spent most of the month of January by his bed wondering what this trauma would make him, my family, and me. I was frazzled from my schedule and scared. I wanted a church but the questions and anxiety I had brought me little from every place I visited.
The month of January changed me. It made me remember and reflect. I came back to the blog with nothing profound but just some stuff to say.
Then I got readers! Then I read my readers and the readers of my readers!
I won't thank you all individually as I know I will forget someone, but know that I take this stuff in. I might not always answer with the intelligence that I want, but I listen. The questions I had before about faith and identity have now been replaced with more questions and the anxiety has been replaced (in ever growing amounts) by medication. Some blog friends have become real friends and some real friends have become blog friends.
Thank you. It seems inadequate to just say thank you but know you have helped me become the latest (and most improved so far) me. Who would have known the part that yarn, the internet and the US Constitution would have in growing me this year!
Keep writing, friends, I'm not through listening.
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1 comment:
Jennifer, it was a pleasure to meet you at the McCarty's last night. You are a very articulate writer even if you don't feel like it and I wish you all the best in BlogYear '05. I found your blog very late in the year but it is very swell and I look forward to continued brilliance.
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