Pay attention - I'm talking about you!

I went to my Writer’s Group meeting last night. An eclectic bunch of people, this group, as prone to light gossip and rabbit trails as they are to critique and commentary. Perhaps that’s why I’m comfortable in that company. No pressure.

But there’s something else. We speak into each other’s lives. This began innocently enough – “Here’s what I was thinking/feeling when I wrote this …” And the conversation turns to those “feelings,” rather than the finished work, yet without intrusion.

Perhaps then, that’s why I thought of you as I was driving home. Tell me – because I’m curious – why do you blog in the first place? Are you just putting words on paper as an emotional release? Or, when you write, do you have the expectation that somebody is gonna read what you have to say, react, and respond? Don’t you know that when you involve me in your life, you become important to me?

To the one in the mid west who told me about her dead cat: When I die I want you to write my obituary.

To the one in Canada who lost her boyfriend: Several of us want to be assured you are okay.

To the one on the west coast who was bothered by unruly children in church: Thank you for understanding that you can rail all you want, and we’ll still be there for you.

Am I explaining this correctly? Can you understand what I’m saying here? High on my list of favorite writers is John Donne. Although I haven’t read anything he may have written in the past year or two, one of his older writings seems to express exactly what my stumbling words cannot.

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

And how was your day?