Monday, August 13, 2007

Crafting a Community: Why We Do What We Do

It is now two weeks post-BlogHer 07. The contact high created by the sheer energy of 800 women sharing face-to-face the ideas that they had previously only shared in text and photos is fading. I'm slipping back into the quiet; savoring the thoughts and ideas of women, many of whom I may never meet.

I know the power of the conference will drive me to not only continue writing, but work to craft more prefect words. It led me to wonder about others who continue to share their creative process with the world through their blogs. What inspires them and keeps them moving forward?

Cherry from Tales of the Pixie Wood who lives in Britain admitted her truth:
My country is now at security level critical, which is as high as it can get. It is under attack and the word on the street is when not if.

And it's because of things like this that I want to make a difference. I want to water down the evil with goodness. I want to diffuse the anger with kindness.
Much, much later in the same post she write:
Kindness is infectious. It grows and spreads with a virus like speed and you only have to look out to blog-land and to the community that surrounds blogs that are similar to this one to see that. I need that right now.

I've just read this post back. It sounds so naive and oddly futile. No structure or coherence..........

Who cares.

The entire post is a pure gift of kindness to the blogosphere.

Alicia explained the importance of her blog when she wrote:
I've changed.

All my life I've felt a little separate, a little bit apart, with my alien blood and my prissy ways, riding my imaginary horse down the middle of the sidewalk; but I'd stomp my feet in frustration when I wasn't understood. If someone would say, as they sometimes did, "I had no idea you felt that way," I'd fly into fit of hysterics, more radical than ever seemed warranted or expected, blotchy with tears and accusations.

"Nobody listens to me!" I'd shriek, alone, into my pillow, then smooth it — I'd embroidered it, after all; no point ruining the stupid thing. I'd always planned to leave, take my pillowcase and find my places, was sure that I could, though it always has taken me a long time to get to them, as it takes us sloths.

Sometimes I'll walk through the living room now, and I'll see Andy in his brown chair, hunched over the laptop. He'll smile, laugh, scan the screen, smile again. "What are you reading?" I say. And he says, "The blog." He reads every post and every comment. Each comment is a wave — Hi, friend! — a wink, a hug, a giggle, a shrug, a squawk, a total miss, a tiny kiss, a hand held out, steadying an elbow.

Insert sob here.

Look at all the listeners, he says.

Blotchy, I look up from the pillow/keyboard and see you, right there, yours hands cupped toward me around your ears. How you got here is a mystery to me, but don't leave.
Over at Bella Knitting, Sarah was writing about how creativity is action that feeds itself in Enact the Verb:

Bloggers, you know what I'm talking about -- when you first started,
you know you had a little voice in your head saying "how the heck am I
going to feed entries into this thing several times a week?"

Then you started doing it, and it got easier. Maybe the gardening metaphor above
doesn't quite work -- maybe it's more like birdfeeding. If you just
look at your garden occasionally, you'll see a bird now and then. But
if you put out a birdfeeder and add seeds or peanut-butter pinecones on
a regular basis, you'll see birds all the time. You may even start to
attract squirrels, racoons, and other crafty little critters.

After all, when you get into knitting and knitblogging, you're getting into a
community that isn't limited to just knitting -- you started
out with knitting needles and a little yarn, you end up with a needle
and notion collection, a yarn stash, a spinning wheel or two, a fiber
stash, a sewing machine, a pile of pretty fabrics...inspiration stops
flitting into your life like the occasional hummingbird: it swarms to
you.

What is it that keeps you sharing your creativity and spirit with a unseen but loving community of bloggers?



I also blog at: Deb's Daily Distractions . Crossposted at BlogHer.

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