Blogging has power. I don’t mean power in affecting my readers, assuming there are any – I mean power in its effect on me.
When I first started consistently writing this blog in July, I didn’t know which direction it would go. The focus on hiking came as a surprise. What about all those other things I’d meant to write?
But somewhere in those early entries, I’d challenged myself. “I still want to reach those High Sierra Lakes,” I wrote in an early post. A few days later, struggling to reach a 9,000-foot meadow, I wondered whether I could even climb another thousand feet.
To my own surprise, the weekly hikes paid off – by mid-August, I’d carried my pack up Kearsarge Pass, at nearly 12,000 feet. And below me lay the lakes I’d longed to see.
But it wasn’t just the hiking that helped. There was something about the words – writing and publicizing them – that kept me going. Writing has power; words have consequences. Plodding up the trail, I composed blog entries. Most never reached the page, but even thinking the words gave me focus. It’s partly the blogging that helped me reach the High Sierras at last.
These days, I’m not writing much. Fall semester started immediately after that last hike. The words still write themselves in my head, but teaching and grading control my life.
Still, it makes me wonder. What else could I achieve? Maybe not the whole Crest Trail or a PhD – at least, not right now – but a finished novel?
Or, on a smaller scale, some story submissions or a few photos at a local gallery? Maybe, even, a less chaotic house before December, when my sixtieth birthday rolls around?
When I first started consistently writing this blog in July, I didn’t know which direction it would go. The focus on hiking came as a surprise. What about all those other things I’d meant to write?
But somewhere in those early entries, I’d challenged myself. “I still want to reach those High Sierra Lakes,” I wrote in an early post. A few days later, struggling to reach a 9,000-foot meadow, I wondered whether I could even climb another thousand feet.
To my own surprise, the weekly hikes paid off – by mid-August, I’d carried my pack up Kearsarge Pass, at nearly 12,000 feet. And below me lay the lakes I’d longed to see.
But it wasn’t just the hiking that helped. There was something about the words – writing and publicizing them – that kept me going. Writing has power; words have consequences. Plodding up the trail, I composed blog entries. Most never reached the page, but even thinking the words gave me focus. It’s partly the blogging that helped me reach the High Sierras at last.
These days, I’m not writing much. Fall semester started immediately after that last hike. The words still write themselves in my head, but teaching and grading control my life.
Still, it makes me wonder. What else could I achieve? Maybe not the whole Crest Trail or a PhD – at least, not right now – but a finished novel?
Or, on a smaller scale, some story submissions or a few photos at a local gallery? Maybe, even, a less chaotic house before December, when my sixtieth birthday rolls around?
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