Writing but not Blogging

My, how time passes. It's been nearly two weeks since I last blogged.

Something about that last sentence sounds like confession. Even though I didn't grow up Roman Catholic, there are enough confession scenes in popular culture for me to know the formula: "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It's been (fill in the blank) weeks since my last confession."

I know what they say about the best ways to blog--being regular, letting your readers know they can really count on you, and all that. And still, sometimes it just doesn't happen. Seems as though I am still working out something about the relationship of blogging to the rest of my writing, or maybe it's to the rest of my life.

I have been writing over these days when I've not been blogging. I've been writing but not blogging. Among other things I've been reacquainting myself with the practice of Proprioceptive Writing, which I first encountered (and practiced for several months) about thirteen years ago. And as with other practices I've been returning to, such as yoga, I find I am coming at this writing practice quite differently. More holistically. With (somewhat) less of an agenda.

I see a parallel between the two "returns"--the one to yoga and the one to proprioceptive writing (or PW for short). When I tried yoga years and years ago, I thought of it rather narrowly as primarily a form of physical exercise for flexibility and I don't know what else. Now I am embracing it in a spirit closer to its heart (and to my heart, too, I suppose), that is, as a means toward greater wholeness and a fuller, healthier interrelationship between my body and my mind and spirit. I like very much that yoga practice often seems to operate on many levels at once--thoroughly grounded and attentive to my body, and yet also with powerful metaphorical force.

Nearly every time I'm at my yoga class I can imagine two or three or sometimes a dozen connections that are worthy of writing about. I am grateful that so often it seems to be exactly where I need (or want?) to be, hearing exactly what I need (or want?) to hear.

With proprioceptive writing, I came to it those thirteen years ago primarily because I thought it would help me to write better--perhaps both because it would provide me with a weekly group to be part of and because it is designed to help you drop down underneath your surface thoughts to stories and memories held perhaps in hiding, held also of course in the very cells of your body.

Now I am discovering its gifts of connecting me more clearly to myself through writing, but not necessarily with an aim toward an end, like writing a book, or writing a better blog post. This time, too, I've read the definitive book on the practice--Writing the Mind Alive--which suggests that the practice is at once an aid to stronger writing as well as to the healing that comes with slowing down and listening to yourself more fully. And the authors offer it also as a "modern day secular spiritual practice". Totally nonsectarian, nondenominational, and non-doctrinal, which was something I was already intuiting about it this time around.

So there's lots going on in my life right now for good, even though I haven't been blogging. I guess I'm still (and always?) negotiating my own terms with blogging--what's my primary purpose in blogging? what's my goal, my aim, my end? (Is it primarily for "business" or for pleasure? and if for business, what business--painting? writing? coaching?) And what are my own "rules" for doing it? How often? and with what range of topics?

When I put it that way, it would seem that blogging is pushing me to figure out my life! Maybe it's time.