The Power of Writing

 Is the pen mightier than the sword? Not today’s topic at all.

I recently saw a video listed on YouTube, titled something along the lines, in relation to, expounding on, under the general theme of, how writing is beneficial in organizing your thoughts or brain or something. I did not watch the video.

I started blogging in 2006. “No Sanction”; intended to be a type of sword, and that still is its intent. It was not my first blog, though I had previously thought it was.

I have a tendency to speak truth to power on all my blogs. I question if that is always a good thing.

Funny story, my first blog, centered on my most loved chosen profession of architecture and planning, “Global Imprint” was started months prior to the aforementioned in 2006 because of an opinion piece of mine printed in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

I was replying to an article on some planned development in Waukesha county. The paper liked my perspective, at least that was my initial impression, and asked permission to print my letter to the editor so to speak.

The problem was it read so terribly in print. The reply window through which I created my opinion piece on the newspaper’s website, was not big enough to show even a full sentence. Due to a format that hindered any potential to edit, the state of print in which my opinions appeared would have sent any of my past English teachers into a comma. I had no choice but to find a way to correct my errors, not to be misunderstood, my intelligence misrepresented, on a topic near and dear to my heart.

So I started a blog to put forward the edited revised version; to make a better impression.

And here we are now.

“A Dog’s Life”; was started in 2007 over my pursuit of fitness and the appeasement of a long denied desire for competition. If I knew then what I know now I may have given the blog a different title. But it fits I must confess.

I investigated my faith life through my personal writings on “From the Inside”.

“Poker Facades” (entailing another extension of my competitive nature) and this blog, my relationship with God our Heavenly Parent acting as a sounding board, spurred me on to contemplate and evaluate activities and story creations that have not been traditionally considered part of a life of faith.

After all that what has writing done for me?

On a generic level, especially when taking time to step back, to review and to edit, every single grammar lesson I had been given in my youth has come back to me in vivid detail. The horror. I recognize mistakes and problems with my writing more and more frequently because a person in the past, who believed in the proper use of language and its importance, did their best to bore those lessons into my brain. I somehow actually must have been listening.

So the practice of writing opens our mind’s memories to the expanse of time bookended by conception and future.

In the sense of wording, the practice of writing makes you a better communicator. It increases the comprehension with which you present your own thoughts; it enlightens and promotes creativity.

These are my own observations, arising from my personal experience with now fifteen plus years of writing, including works of fiction (see sidebar for links to purchase) and a touch of poetry.

Now we approach the essence of the journey writing takes one on; the path of self realization and the growth that comes with it.

Particularly in works of fiction, one cannot help but adventure through the ins and outs of one’s life, the foundations of one’s imagination and world view.

Which brings me to the point of this contemplation. More than organizing one’s thoughts, beliefs, desires, perspectives, world view, the origins of our imagination and creativity… writing, trying to get out what is inside, opens many doors; reveals many truths to those willing to look inside.

From a humanistic perspective, something I distain, some would call this therapy.

I call it digging into one’s own mind, freeing oneself from the shackles of the world around us; a world that condemns humankind to the imprisonment which ignorance enforces upon the lost.

Know thyself. The truth shall set you free.

God Bless.

Thank you for reading.

Happy 2021!

I encourage you to write in a fashion fitting to yourself. We spend a lot of time on our annual Christmas letter to family and friends for example.

The chronology of my blogs.

“Global Imprint”                        2006 June

“No Sanction”                           2006 September

“It’s a Dog’s Life”                      2007 May

“From the Inside”                      2008 March

“Poker Facades”                       2009 June

“Versus, Haikus and Memoirs”  2009 June

What’s with June?

Okay, I’m done now.

Thanks again. Really done.

I should try to spend a whole week on developing a post rather than just the better part of the waking day.

Yeah. Done.