So. Blogging ain’t easy. I think of my lovely friend Kate Murdoch with her a-n blog called Keeping It Going and smile at it’s aptness. Sometimes it really is hard to keep going. You can catch this superb blog here:
https://www.a-n.co.uk/blogs/keeping-it-going-1/post/52431157
Yet blogging is a really important process within my practice and also my development as a human being. There’s a marvellous confluence here. As creatives we grow through our work, becoming ever more who we were meant to be – or so I believe. A creative life is a privileged one as it facilities this self-development. A creative life is both fulfilling and by definition a page turner – it literally is a gift.
And blogging is part of that gift – the gift of self expression and self knowledge. It is also the gift of communication.
So it’s quite difficult to say that I’ve dried up a bit on the blogging front. That I’m feeling quite exposed. My work is so very personal and my recent explorations into neurological difference have me in something of a twist. I both want to talk about it openly – it is after all my normal to be a neurodivergent woman – and at the same time I want to hide away and be private about it.
This needs evaluating but also I’ve reached blog saturation in terms of my work too. Perhaps these two factors are connected. Time will tell.
The fact is that for the past two and half years of my postmemory project I’ve produced a mountain of online content both in terms of visual output and blogging. Probably it’s time to regroup. I need to think about what’s been produced so far and where this is going.
I have a couple of projects on a slow burner and they need my sustained attention. I feel I have to slow down, stop producing ever new material and focus on these longer term ideas. Very hard for a workaholic with a butterfly mind.
I’m like the character of Saga Noren from the Swedish/Danish TV noir series The Bridge, in this sense. I need to work. The challenge will be settling my brain on a single task.
One of the beautiful things about blogging has been the relationships I’ve forged with fellow bloggers (you know who you are!) which have proved immensely sustaining. Blog droughts create a vacuum sometimes where contact is lessened and we can slip into what feels like invisibility if we are not constantly active online. But perhaps this is a mirage. Less can be more – it often is. I wonder if less is taking me deeper? I know that my blog sisters are there behind the scenes and support is a direct message or an email away.
Given the nature of my subject – working with traumatic memory in the form of postmemory – I have to be a little careful too about where the work takes me. As a therapist I’m usually quite able to keep myself balanced. You can read about aspects of this process here:
https://soniaboue.wordpress.com/2015/12/13/surviving-a-postmemory-practice/
Lately I don’t feel the balance is all there and for this reason too I need to take a back seat on the blogging. I feel a real need to retreat from the world of words and information about the ghastly world situation we are living through. It’s time to look away for a while and my antidote is to focus more on everyday rituals and the image.
For this reason I’ve re-uploaded the Instagram app onto my phone. I’m looking forward to sharing some images and will I reckon resort to the visual blog. Never a bad thing.
Of course this situation is temporary. My commitment to my postmemory endeavours remains firm, it’s just that I need time out. I could do with a sandy beach and some solitude, and with listening to the waves as they wash over my feet. Breathe in breathe out. I feel the need for the elemental.
I hope to be back soon… xx
