January. What a beautiful month for disasters. And disasters there have been. From a petulant adult child who sashays around the house rumbling with cantankerous tantrums and peevish sulking sessions for reasons only known to themselves (semi-permanent house guest), to house floods and garden floods, floods on concrete, wood, and carpet, to learning of significant damage to the foundation of our house, to broken electrics and unfinished construction work from said flood, to Mummy Bear once again landing herself in the hospital after a mild stroke, and a bad dose of flu that transmuted into a nasty chest infection, both putting me on my back for 11 days straight, as well as all the usual worries, stresses, and concerns, the last 30 days of January have been quite unpleasant. I don’t dare to imagine what’s scheduled in February’s arsenal.
Today resembles a quintessentially British day here in Georgia. The weather is mild but wet. Foggy and grim with a doomsday visage. It has all the energy of woolly socks, weighted blankets, and steaming mugs of tea, which I won’t lie, sounds altogether pleasing and restful. After all, whatever dramatics January insists on pulling, it still stands strong on reminding us that despite this being a new year, we aren’t to rush ourselves or our winter hibernation. And I for one am more than happy to sleep the rest of winter away, only to reawaken once spring is here, stirring beneath cherry blossoms and birdsong. I can almost feel the prosperity of the sunlit earth and budding stems against my fingers, and I can almost anticipate the happiest sensation of counting new leaves on reawakened trees. Until then, we remain within the stark clutches of winter. A beloved season to few, and a season of great inconvenience to most.
When I first started my blog, I flipped through the online categories to see which one would suit me best. I’m more of a Yogi bear than an Amazonian, so I knew that fitness was out of the question, and as any one of my credit card companies will gladly confirm, I’m no good with finances, so financial advice was also scrapped. I’m neither a homemaker, nor a mama of a (human) child, nor have any meditation wisdom to offer up. I’ve been coasting all this time, wondering whether I’m blogging “correctly” and how long before someone notices that I haven’t squeezed myself into a narrowing identification box. In truth, I wasn’t sure where I belonged in the blogging world. A lifestyle blog didn’t appeal to me either. I’ve always understood a lifestyle blog to consist of ridiculously gorgeous people – usually women – who photograph themselves from outrageously expensive, exclusive, and exotic locations while doing outrageously expensive, exclusive, and exotic excursions. Oh, and they then write about their unattainable world from borrowed ivory towers. Think along the lines of Thomas Cook or Sandals on Crack.
The question remained: where do I belong within this blogging world – if I belong at all? As I began writing this, hampered by the enormity of January, all whilst trying to recuperate from a traumatic twelve months, I realized that blogging - journaling my feelings aloud and existing somewhere outside of myself - isn’t only a very introverted persona but it’s also an attempt at relatability. It’s about seeking passage inwards and holding a flame of words to the interior of myself, before setting that flame to a keyboard as it transmits my discoveries. It's about sharing. Sharing feelings, sharing experiences, sharing both the beautiful and the ugly, the complicated and the easy, and the synchronic; all wordy blog posts epitomizing a bridge to connect and shape a community of like-minded idealists. So perhaps I was wrong when I first suggested that my blog – The Kink of Writing – wasn’t a lifestyle blog. Perhaps it has always been a lifestyle blog. A lifestyle blog for all the talk-a-lots, the introverts, the artists, the walking wounded, the 90s romancers, the poets, and the dreamers.
Yes, I think I have found myself. I’ve claimed an alcove within the great theme park of the blogging world and it's mine. Maybe January isn’t so bad after all. (No, it is. It really truly is!)
