{"id":18373,"date":"2016-06-28T00:54:26","date_gmt":"2016-06-28T04:54:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tengrrl.com\/blog\/?p=18373"},"modified":"2016-06-28T00:54:26","modified_gmt":"2016-06-28T04:54:26","slug":"writing-on-eggshells","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tengrrl.com\/blog\/2016\/06\/28\/writing-on-eggshells\/","title":{"rendered":"Writing on Eggshells"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"shells\"<\/a>Damn the uncomfortable readers. It\u2019s time to start writing again. <\/p>\n

Some time ago, more than a decade, I wrote on this blog all the time. There were daily updates on what I was writing, links to things that I found, stories about my crazy dreams, and varied random ramblings. Some of those posts are harder to find because I made some dumb decisions about post titles, and I haven\u2019t fixed them all (it’s on my to-do list). The point is that they are there. <\/p>\n

I said what I thought, talked about the things I was working on, and described what was going on each day. When I was sad and depressed, I talked about it. I have dysthymic depression, social anxiety, and have had issues with major depression a few times. I didn’t put the names to what I was going through, but I talked about being overwhelmed and sad and scared and anxious. <\/p>\n

And that was the problem. My posts made some people uncomfortable. Someone came to me and told me that I shouldn’t write everything I feel because I was “making everyone feel like they were walking on eggshells around me.” I could write about what I was working on, but I was told not to write about being sad or depressed or anxious. <\/p>\n

So I stopped writing. I’m a black-and-white thinker<\/a>, so it was my standard response. I let the uncomfortable readers silence me. <\/p>\n

Eventually, I started posting news links<\/a>. If you check the archives, there are years where nearly every post is a summary of the links I have posted to Twitter about educational news and writing resources. <\/p>\n

I wanted to write and post more, but there were people worried about walking on eggshells always in my thoughts. So I said nothing for a very long time. And now, I am going to start writing again. I’m going to say what I want. I’m not sure what has made me brave enough to talk again. Perhaps it’s that I started taking antidepressants again in November after six years without them (when I couldn’t afford them at $800\/month). Maybe it’s that I am teaching again. Maybe I just feel like a writer again. <\/p>\n

Part of it is that I finally figured out how to move all those news posts to their own page and take back the blog’s homepage. That’s what I am going to do: take back my writing space and say what I want. I will no longer worry about my readers. I will write on those eggshells and post what I want. Here’s to writing whatever I want to say whenever I want to say it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Damn the uncomfortable readers. It\u2019s time to start writing again. Some time ago, more than a decade, I wrote on this blog all the time. There were daily updates on what I was writing, links to things that I found, stories about my crazy dreams, and varied random ramblings. Some of those posts are harder […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[398],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqzI8-4Ml","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tengrrl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tengrrl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tengrrl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tengrrl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tengrrl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18373"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.tengrrl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18383,"href":"https:\/\/www.tengrrl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18373\/revisions\/18383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tengrrl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tengrrl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tengrrl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}