Registered, Enrolled and Attending!

The world of blogging, at least for me, tends to roll over into real life. I guess that is what happens when a person decides to blog without a primary focus for material. When I began blogging nine months ago I chose the tagline, “Thoughts about life, death and the world around me.” I was, after all, blogging out of my need to recover from multiple personal losses in a period of three months. Needless to say, I was doing a LOT of thinking and not much sleeping.

Now I am feeling like myself again, for the most part. I mean, I feel like my old self (except for the occasional stream of tears running down my cheeks) but I am a happier, stronger, more confident self who manages to sleep well once I get around to turning out the lights. I have discovered a talent I never knew I had and now use the voice I had been suppressing from “the world.” And while I continue to blog about my thoughts on life, death and the world around me I have also come to use my tiny blog as a forum I can use to advocate for animals (because they cannot advocate for themselves) in my Seeking Love Saturdays posts. I am exploring the art of storytelling with Memee’s Supershort Stories! and host a monthly event entitled Memee’s Poetry Parties. My life as a blogger expanded and exploded though my readership continues to flag.

When I first decided to begin a blog it was because I knew from my teen and young adult years that journaling always helped me get out the toxic emotions and learn how I was really feeling about the situations occurring in my life. I knew that was an effective tool for me. I also knew that my mind flies when my fingers are on a keyboard and so blogging seemed the perfect fit And, it is! I was fortunate in that shortly after I began blogging I discovered that WordPress actually offered free classes on how to get started and so I registered, enrolled and began attending Blogging 101 just days after designing my blog. Wow, the universe was on my side, finally!

However, when Blogging 101 ended I watched and I waited eagerly for blogging 201 to begin. And it was like watching a teakettle… nothing happened. I found myself waiting in the blogging world for days, for weeks while, in the real world life marched forward so much so that when Blogging 201 did begin, my Freshman classmates moved forward and I had missed the registration deadline. Not once, but twice (at least). Which may be why I have under 250 followers while my Freshman classmates seem to shine with their thousands. Or, at least, that’s what I have been telling myself up til now.

And here is where I find life and blogging overlapping again. I have been talking about “going back to school for 3 years now, but life happened and school did not. And then, within the same week I found myself registering and now enrolled in school as well as registered and enrolled and as of today, attending Blogging 201! Wow, when the universe gives it gives big which I am especially grateful for considering 2014 was a year filled with the universe taking away BIG TIME.

So now here we are, Day-1 of the Blogging 201 course and our assignment is to set 3 goals for ourselves. Interestingly enough, in the real world class begins next week but we already have assignments to work on. One of which is setting short and long term goals for ourselves and sharing those goals with our classmates for support as well as accountability. Blogging World mimicking real life again and on the very same day! I won’t go into my real world goals here today, however, here are my 3 blogging goals:

1. Create a successful linky party for poets of all ages, languages and skill levels to share with and inspire one another.

2. Develop my fictional writing with the intention of expanding my imagination and ability to spark personal inspiration.

3. Build a larger audience so that I can educate more people about mental health, advocate for the lives of animals and entertain or inspire others while continuing to utilize blogging as a tool for better awareness and understanding of myself and my feelings, thoughts and actions.

Photo credit: venspired / Foter / CC BY-NC-ND