Dungeon Prompt: Why do I blog?

The Dungeon Prompt for this week:

There are many different reasons for blogging. Some do it as a journaling exercise to work through issues. Others do it as a way to communicate with an online community. Some do it as advertising, while others do it to bring awareness to a particular cause. Many do it just as a creative outlet, and to practice and perfect their craft. Why do you blog? What do you get out of it? Are you happy with your experience so far? Let us in on what drives you to keep blogging

I began blogging a little over four years ago because I kept getting a nudge during meditations with my guides to do it.  Short pieces about the spiritual journey had been writing themselves in my head but I didn’t know why or what the forum for them might be.  Hence the meditation to call in my “council” and ask why I kept receiving these little essays and whether I was supposed to do something with them .

At the time I barely knew what blogging was but I’d learned to follow those nudges (at least the ones I’m not resisting 🙂 ) so I did a little research, picked WordPress and started posting twice a week.  And one of my friends and I read them regularly.  Didn’t know a thing about engaging with others or how to get a blog seen.

For months I was fine with that since the instruction to do it was mysterious and I had no stake in whether anyone read it or not.  Eventually, though, it seemed a little pointless other than whatever gains I made from the regular exercise of writing.

So I did some research about how to get readers and started prowling through other people’s blogs, following and liking and occasionally commenting.  Lo and behold, there were soon people following me!

I’ve never really taken to most of the social media stuff so my expectations were low.  The amazing community in which I’ve found myself immersed has been a revelation.  While a lot of mainstream blogging is of no more interest to me than people’s tweets and FB posts about stubbing their toes (in fairness, I’m blessed with friends who are deep seekers and whose posts in those other places tend to be uplifting, touching, interesting…), spiritual bloggers constantly move me, teach me, inspire me.

The world of spirituality blogging has proved to be full of amazing, insightful, deep people and I am now completely hooked on hanging out daily with my blogging pals, reading their amazing posts, commenting back and forth and feeling my world so enriched by these connections.

I’ve been fortunate enough to meet a couple of my fave bloggers in person, which has been wonderful.  I hope it happens with many more.

My world has been pretty circumscribed the last couple of years because of the health stuff. And also an odd inverse relationship wherein as my health improves my tolerance for what’s still wrong decreases; I’m much more likely now to skip a party or say no to going somewhere than when my health was far worse…  At any rate, these connections through blogging –along with my natural ability to hang out alone — have kept me from loneliness.

Posts are still writing themselves in my head and, for the most part, I only post when something is tapping on my shoulder and asking to be written.  I’ve been seeing the edges of a larger plan behind the Higher Self advice to start a blog.  Part of it has just been the development of a style to my writing that I think is much more readable than my previous attempts to write of my journey.  The rest of the “larger plan” is still pretty sketchy, so for now I’m just going to wait to write about it.

The short of it is I now blog because (1) I love the community I’ve found (or it’s found me?) and (2) telling my story and the things I’ve learned along the way still feels like the right thing to do.