Today (and last night, to be honest) I was consumed by anger about a particular set of laws that have been proposed here in Georgia and throughout the United States. The recent attacks on women and reproductive freedoms have me completely infuriated. So much so that I have been losing sleep over the issue.
While I don't plan to stop with writing a blog post that only a small handful of people will read, it was my necessary first step. Now that I've written it, it becomes real.
It was always weird for me, that listening to lectures in high school and college, I could process information and respond to ideas, but until I wrote something down about it, until I wrote my own essay, or put the concepts down into my own words, they never really clicked for me. Writing is a way of processing ideas, of making them real. It's how I work things out, how I process them. Even if I just whiteboard an idea out and erase it immediately, what I write down there sticks with me far better than anything I listen to or encounter in any other way.
It's why writing in a journal or diary has always been a great way for me to address serious issues in my life. If I try to process it just in my head or talking it out, I can lose track of the issue. I have to write it down, make lists, compose a narrative for the issue. Only then does it really mean anything. Only then does it become real to me.
Writing is how I give life to my thoughts.
So forgive me, people in my life, if sometimes I can't deal with issues the first time I encounter them, or if I have to shut down an argument or discussion that occurs in real life. If I haven't written about it previously, chances are I can't get a handle on my thoughts. They're flitting around in my head, effervescent with their intangibility. Until I pin them down and capture them with the written word, they're not real to me.
If I've written about it previously though, I'm good to go. So watch out if you engage me on one of those issues. :)
