A blogger's progression.

Have I progressed?

As of late, my thoughts have been turned to my personal progression: where I am now vs. where I've been. Kind of like balancing the checkbook of life.

If you made a list, the results could be very discouraging. You'll see that I am still battling some of the same basic character flaws and bad habits (i.e. disorganization, procrastination, etc.) that began even in my childhood, and may even have, in some ways, grown (because self-discipline comes into play once you've left home) and there have been some new entries added to the list.

I have a feeling that I will spend most of my life struggling to overcome these very same weaknesses because they go down to my very core. It seems odd to be able to know exactly what I need to change and not be able to simply start on a clean slate and leave those things in the past. However, I understand that lasting change is a long and drawn out process. It takes starting over repeatedly until each time becomes easier and it finally sticks. The "line upon line, precept upon precept" principle also applies in building character.

So am I really the same person I was 2-3 years ago? Have I actually become worse? I still have some of the same problems. I have new ones, and will continue to pick up bad habits as I go. Has my life really been stagnant this entire time? Or worse - have I been going in a downward spiral?

The answer, I hope, is "Of course not!" I know that I am a different person now than I was 2-3 years ago. I would not claim to be a whole new person, but I have changed. And I like to think that subtle as the difference is, it has been for the better.

There has been some change in my actions, but I think the biggest change that has happened in the last few years has been mostly in the way that I view the world. Is that what we call the process of "maturing"?


What I blog about

This blog being a representation of my life through my eyes, I've used it to compare myself as I am now to the me in the past. I've noticed that the things that I currently write about are quite different from what I would write about before. This blog started out with the name "Faye's Boyfriend Replacement" because this is what it was in essence. I started it just after I had broken up with Mark the first (or second?) time. I did not know how to function without an intimate relationship.

We watched the movie "Shall We Dance" yesterday (B movie: more enjoyable than painful, funny even, but not life changing) and the wisdom that I took home from it was a quote from Susan Sarandon. Her answer to her rhetorical question "Why do people get married" was that people need a witness to their lives. I am paraphrasing, but the basic thought was this: there are billions of people in the world, each having their separate lives, yet everyone has the need to feel special. When you get married, you have this companion and you promise that you will always be there for each other, to notice and to care about every little thing you do.

What truth.

In trying to detach myself from Mark, I found that I no longer had a person to share the events of my life with. I was so used to having someone to tell about my day, about how I was feeling, about my thoughts - whatever they were. I turned to writing, to express myself and created my own world on here, a space for myself to feel noticed.

I didn't have much of a social life then, and I turned to blogging. I wasn't happy with where I was in life and my blog was my happy place. Incentive to look at life positively so I could find in it humor and enjoyment. As a result, I would blog about events of my day in great detail. Who said what, who did what, when, where. I would also blog about my feelings concerning those events. Much of the focus of my posts were relationship-related. My relationship with Mark, my parents, my siblings, church, the family I babysat, the YW I had a stewardship over. That was my world then. I wrote everything down because I wanted to remember those things and I was afraid that if I didn't write them down I would forget the details.

I never ran out of things to blog about. I lived a little bit, and then I would have to hurry and put it into record before the moment had passed.

Something happened in between then and now. Some days, I just don't have anything to blog about. Some nights, I don't feel like I have anything really important to say that I will want to remember a week, a month, even a few years from now, or any thoughts I need to think "aloud" through blogging, so I don't blog. Details bore me. I don't feel the need to put down the events of my day on here. Only on rare occasion. Even then, I don't say much about it. Just a picture or two and a few words to spark the memory I leave unwritten. I am in love with someone right now, but he has remained far in the background in my blog where I would write so much about crushes just a few months ago, almost to the point of obsession.

Why is that? Is it because he is far away and I think about him less than I have any other guy? I would contend that that is not anywhere remotely true.


The significance of what we write

Why do I write about different things now (or do I)? Is my blog a correct representation of my life as it is to me, or more of what I am lacking in reality? Do I only write about things I don't have room to express in real time? Has the content of my blog changed because I have a social life now and that particular void has been filled in reality so that I don't have to turn to blogging for it? Am I simply more aware of my readership so I have become more cautious with what I put on here, or has there really been a change in my cognition, in what I find important to talk about? Have I actually developed a change in perspective that has created a shift in the weight I put on things in my life, which in turn affects what I decide to write about?

Have I changed for the better? Where?

On top of comparing myself in the present and in the past, I have also compared myself to other bloggers. Different people write about different things. Is that an accurate representation of their inner workings? Is what they write about what they are made of? Can you gauge the phase of life they are in by the content of their blog?

What is the difference between the teenager that writes about everything they did, who said what, when and where, and the adult who blogs about politics and contemplations about life? What does it say about the phases of life they encounter?

Can I say that I feel like I have "matured" because what I write now is different from before? Is it just "different" or do I really mean "better"? I feel like I have overcome my dependence on relationships. I observe what other people around me are experiencing through what they write about and I empatize, because those same concerns were a part of my past. Does that mean that I have actually "graduated" and moved on, or simply that I am blessed with all those needs right now so I am not lacking. Maybe this is just a phase, and because things are going good for me right now, I feel balanced and stable. Maybe when things start to fall apart, I will fall back into old irrational thought patterns, re-learn neediness and develop different blogging habits.

After all that speculation, I would like to think that there has been a shift in the things that I think about, and I hope that it has manifested itself in my writing. I feel like I in this last semester alone, I have become more observant, more detached from my surroundings and more analytical. I enjoy contemplating about people and life, things that go beyond the immediate events of my day. There is still plenty of self-exploration. This blog is still all about me and what I think about, but there is more of a connection with me and the bigger picture.

At the same time, I feel less fun, and almost missing the element of humor on here. Bah. Funny has never been my forte anyway. As long as I know how to have a great time in "real" life, right?


What do you have to say?

I think that the basic assumption I am making here is that progression can be gauged by the substance of what one has to say. Because what one says has everything to do with what one thinks.

Take, for example, a 5-year-old, a 10-year-old, a 15-year-old, a 20-year-old, a 40-year-old and an 80-year-old. Each has something different to say. The 5-year-old would probably tell you about a recent event. How they just went swimming and that they got peanut butter and jelly all over the floor and mommy got mad. A 10-year-old might tell you about school and who their friends are, what fun things they do together on weekends, the Lego set they want for their birthday. At 15, they may tell you about a new love interest, and how their parents don't understand them. At 20, well, I'm 20. You know what I write about.

What will that 40-year-old write about? How they went swimming and it rained on them, and that she got mad at her 5 year old for smearing a sandwich all over the house? Would she talk about her how they are saving up for that Lego set? Or how much she wishes her 15 year old could see what she sees. Will she write about how much she misses her 20-year-old at college? Or how she worries for her children? Perhaps she will choose, instead, to talk about the events of her workday. Perhaps she will use writing as a place to vent about her frustration in her relationship with her spouse. Or maybe she will instead choose to write about what being a parent teaches you about God. Maybe she will write about unconditional love. Or she may even write about how the government is not providing children with the education they need.

What will change by the time you reach 80?

Is there a connection between age, maturity, thought process, and writing? How do we gauge maturity? Can we say that what a 5 or 10 year old thinks and writes about is "less important" or "less mature" than what that 20-year-old will? Or is it simply "different" due to the different experiences each encounter. Are the experiences of a 20-year-old worth by themselves more than that of a child's, or is it what they each gain from them what makes a difference?

How do you gauge maturity?

One thing I have noticed, as I write this, is that our world expands with our age. A five-year-old's universe is very small, and their conception of time is different from that of someone who has lived 80 years. While the 40 year old may experience the exact same events as the 5 year old, they have a lot of other things going on at the same time. They have been given more options, more things to think about, more issues to address.

So, is maturity having more things to think about? Having a larger universe, a more "accurate" sense of reality? Is the expansion of ones universe based solely on the number of experiences one encounters, the number of responsibilites one carries or does it have more to do with egocentricity? As your world grows, do you become smaller?

All this talk about mature thought. In the end, actions speak louder than words. What good does it do me if I sit here and think about life all day and leave my own life in a tangled web of broken relationships and forgotten responsibilities?

However, when all is said and done, I still wonder what it is that I will have to say 20, 40, even 60 years from now.