How Blogging Changed Me (For the Better)

Andrew Sullivan wrote a terrific essay on blogging in which he said:

For bloggers, the deadline is always now. Blogging is therefore to writing what extreme sports are to athletics: more free-form, more accident-prone, less formal, more alive. It is, in many ways, writing out loud. [...]

To blog is therefore to let go of your writing in a way, to hold it at arm’s length, open it to scrutiny, allow it to float in the ether for a while, and to let others [...] pivot you toward relative truth. A blogger [...] can provoke discussion or take a position, even passionately, but he also must create an atmosphere in which others want to participate.

That sentiment is in many ways how blogging has changed my life and perspective.  To blog–in the purest and most engaging sense– is to be vulnerable.  Blogging means pressing forward with sometimes whimsical or under-developed ideas; it means relying on often-times sharp-tounged commentors who will tell you that you’re wrong/stupid/crazy in no uncertain terms…but who will also introduce new ideas and perspectives to what would otherwise be an internal thought process.

That’s how I’ve changed through blogging.  I’m less likely to deliberate quietly on an issue and instead more likely to provoke debate.   I’m quicker to throw my thoughts or beliefs into the (modest) spotlight and more likely to change my mind.  I’m thicker skinned and more aware of what I don’t know as well as those beliefs that I consider core to my being.  I’ve opened up, to a potentially limitless audience, and I’m stronger for it.

But blogging is about more than vulnerability.  It’s about finding new and creative ways to parse our inner struggles–be those issue debates, political choices, career decisions, or relationship woes–in the public square, engaging an audience and finding what I think of as the generalizable lessons or questions in the personal detail.  This is, by itself, stepping out on a limb but it’s also a healthy way of maintaining perspective.  A readable blog can’t be overly self-pitying or boastful, and in that sense blogging forces me to consider a larger picture and an audience that cares not about me but about the topics of my post.

Blogging is sometimes stressful.  When I neglect the blog for days at a time (as I have all too frequently in the past few months) I feel the same guilt that I felt when I procrastinated on final papers in college.  The web never sleeps, and blog posts don’t write themselves, but that too has been a lesson.  We’re fortunate enough to live in a world with endless information, issues and questions worthy of our attention, and smart people to learn from.  But we can’t cover it all.  Blogging has forced me to focus, to recognize that sometimes being connected to the latest information must be secondary to offline or unplugged reflection.  When I neglect the blog I feel as though I’m neglecting my audience to be sure, but more importantly and more deeply I feel that I’m missing an important part of my growth as an individual.  

I have a few modest examples of how writing a blog has opened doors for me in my career and life, but the most signficant way that blogging has changed my life is by habitualizing my thinking and reflection in a way that exposes me to more ideas and viewpoints than I could ever hope to consider through my own (previously) silent intake of information.