In September of 2009 my young friend Ashley told me I should write my own blog. She helped me get set up.
From the start I knew my grammar would be horrific. My sentence structure sucks. I write, like I talk, using commas to pause…..and lots of dots to pause. I misuse words. And I freely make up words.
But I have always written. And always will.
Lucky for me WordPress exists. Up until WordPress everything sat in a tub. Not surprisingly I even wrote about that once. So YAY! for WordPress. You may or may not feel the same way about me finding WordPress, depending on how tolerant you are of my inability to grasp the fundamentals of proper writing skills. If you are not happy about it, you won’t be reading this anyway. And I respect that. I am an acquired taste.
I know that there are millions just like me. You/I have a burning desire to write. You/I think it, breathe it, and see things to write about all through your day. They may be in snippets, these topics that breath through out our day. Or they may be an on going story line that burns through your thoughts. All-day-long.
I’m not sure how long I was using WordPress before I even discovered “Freshly Pressed”. When I did find it I had no idea what it was and how to appear there. Took me awhile to figure that out.
Then I eagerly checked. Every day. To see if I had made the cut.
Head drop here. Some days I would sigh and think I would never be good enough. I was embarrassed by the desire I had to be on “FP”.
I enjoyed going to “FP” because I found so many wonderful writers. Great ideas. Great experiences. Great photography. Great causes. Great sympathy and compassion. Great people.
I thought I had talked myself in to believing I didn’t really need that recognition. I have found so many incredible people on WordPress. My experience has been nothing but positive. People are kind, respectful even in disagreements. I’ve written horrible posts. I’ve written some that I thought were pretty good. And people recognized this and gave me feedback. Communication. Wonderful communication. From around the world!
Someone asked me not to long ago – would I continue to write if I no longer had a forum like WordPress to ‘publish’ my work. I didn’t even have to think about it. Yes. Of course I would. I did long before WordPress. If WordPress disappeared (please oh please do not!) I would continue to write as I always have.
So why was I hung up on being Freshly Pressed? I don’t know. Just more validation I guess. Just one more person reading something I wrote and connecting to it. And communicating with me about the topic. Maybe that was it. I believe communication is the soul of our existence. What we give to one another through communication is the most concrete part of our existence. Maybe that’s part of it.
Today I got that little email. Telling me. I was picked. I know what it isn’t. It isn’t something that will change the world. It isn’t something that will set people’s hearts on fire. It isn’t something that will pass the test of eternal great writing. But that little email from one of the editors of WordPress changed my world. It set my heart on fire.
And I liked it.
And if there was a like button to like every single one of you who have read, commented, liked, sent virtual hugs, “nods nods”, I would cross it out. Write in big red letters LOVE on it, and press it for every one of you.
Thank you.
Sincerely, thank you.
2204 posts written. 1685 posts published. 1 FRESH PRESSED.
I will gladly write 2204 more posts, publish 1685 of them to get my second post Fresh Pressed. Thank you for the opportunity. 🙂
The Chatter Blog 