Monday 2 April 2012

Fragile in Cyberspace

“Would you meet with him?

I don’t know.

We are meeting as bloggers.

I sent out an invitation to come and help us launch the website www.amitypublishers.net which we did in high style with champagne, a toast, and even a prayer. We had chocolate, grapes, blueberry cheese, crackers and such. It can’t get much better than that. We even projected the site on the web and I told them the year-long story behind the building of it.

I emphasized how difficult it was. In hindsight, I think I still feel guilty that it took me so long to do something others find so easy. The website was not hard but determining how I was going to do it was hard.

We didn’t linger on the website. We went around the circle and talked about our blogging experience. There were some who had written only one blog; some who had written and then stopped a year ago. There were some who were writing sporadically, and some who were in the groove.

There was even one who didn’t write blogs, never read them and had no intention of writing one or reading them. Can you imagine that? And he even dared to admit it. He really had no chance. We all ganged up on him, pestered him with questions and finally came up with a theme for him, a way he could blog and his contribution to all of us if he did. He agreed to think about it. I hope he realizes that it was all in fun.

The rest of us talked about the role of blogging for us and that deep longing to write. We all felt it was important it is to find words for what we are experiencing.

The guests understood my difficulty. We talked about how hard it is to write when things aren’t going well in our lives. There was recognition that when we are doing well, it is easy to blog. When we are suffering, it is much more difficult to be open about it or even open about other things in our lives.

It is difficult to be exposed and to live transparently so that everyone can see what we are inside and out.

For some reason the website feels as if I am exposing myself even more. It is terrifying. Perhaps that has been another reason why it took so long.

Perhaps it is one of the reasons I needed friends around me. Thank you for coming. Thank you for toasting the moment.

Come and have a close-up look at the website where I will be blogging... www.amitypublishers.net

The doors we open and close each day decide the lives we live. – Flora Whittemore



Photo by: Cliff Derksen
Even the flowers feel fragile under the close-up lens of a photographer.



Flowers are courtesy of Assiniboine Conservatory
Winnipeg, Manitoba