We live in our experience. Our thoughts are bounded by our vocabulary and language. We do what we know. We come to know the things we do. Writing is a search for meaning. The reader finds meaning by reading the words. The writer from writing. I blog so that even though I am living with Parkinson’s I am not confined by it. Parkinson’s is a loss of function. Writing creates new meaning and purpose. PD dominates my experience. Writing distances me and gives me some relief. Writing is thinking. It gives form to thought, deepening my understanding of what I am going through by making me express my thoughts clearly. It allows me to see PD with an objective eye and helps me cope with it. Creativity makes misery bearable. It helps get the PD out of me. We live in what we make of the world. Writing is a stroll through my mind that allows me to remember where I’ve been, understand where I am, and see where I am going.
I, at first, started blogging because it was an easy and convenient way to keep my family, living in different states and countries, updated as to what was happening with my Parkinson’s. It was easier to write about PD and let them read it when they wanted than to discuss it with each of them separately. Since it was meant for my family, my first posts were informative: diagnosis, symptoms, and what I do to get by.
I was surprised that people I didn’t know began to read my blog so I started writing with a wider audience in mind. Blogging served as my coming out that I had Parkinson’s and helped get me out of the PD medical closet. One approach to writing is to concentrate on meaning and the craft of writing. Blogging lends itself to informality and getting a feeling for the person writing the words, the sense of a person not a writer, talking to the reader. I found that strangers were reading the blog and enjoyed what I was writing. People told me they learned from what I wrote, others said they laughed, and some cried. They seemed to want to read more so I started thinking about what would be of interest to the PD community and began to research and learn about PD in order to become knowledgeable and develop subject matter. The more I learned the better I understood what PD was doing to me and what I had to do to get by.
Then I had my first thousand page hits and the old ego came into play. I was being read in more than 30 different countries, glad to see Canada and England and happily surprised by Russia, Romania, Poland, Latvia and the Ukraine. Each day I would log in and feel good when I saw a new country and then South Korea, Japan, and Singapore picked me up. Imagine that, how did they find me in Burma and Bangladesh and Iraq and Iran? The internet is amazing.
I now write for the pure pleasure of it. To have an idea and then try to express it in words. To initially get it down on paper and then to shape it and watch it grow and take on form and meaning over time. To see where the writing leads me and where I lead it. To more deeply understand something by writing about it. To walk away from it and think about it and then go back to it and work on it again and to sometimes get it right. To be surprised by what writing one word after another finally becomes. Then to let it go and yes as soon as I publish it to see the mistakes I made and how I could improve it. Writing is written with a reader in mind and posted to be read. Life happens when you connect with people. So finally I wonder how it is received and what you, the reader, think.
