by Karen Batchelor of MidLife’s A Trip

I am a relative “newbie” on the blogging scene.  Oh, I’d heard of blogs.  But 1 ½ years ago if you had asked me to describe blogging, I would have been speechless.  And that doesn’t happen to me often.

My baby steps into blogging came as the result of an assignment.  I was working on my professional coaching certification and one of the requirements was to start a blog.  I confess — I rolled my eyes at the thought of me putting my thoughts, or anything for that matter, out in the blogosphere for anyone to read.  Where I came from in corporate America and the practice of law, what you blog can and will be held against you.  So to say I was resistant to the idea of blogging is an understatement.

I procrastinated on my assignment as long as possible and then signed on to set up my first blog.  There’s something about tackling new technology at this time of life that sometimes sends my confidence to an all-time low.  Maybe it’s because I didn’t grow up with the Internet and computers so the bells and whistles aren’t intuitive.

Whatever it was, I struggled with blogging at first—and not just with the technology.  I just couldn’t figure out what to write.  Coming from a background where I often felt I had to self-censor what I said in public, I faced a blogger’s block the size of the Great Wall of China.  The words I wrote were subjected to a perfectionism that had nothing to do with my ability as much as it had to do with my fear of how someone would view what I wrote.

One day, though, the over-achiever in me said “the heck with everyone else” and I stepped up to claim my little corner of the blogosphere.  I began a 2-week blog retreat in my home office where I immersed myself in everything I could find on the ins and outs of blogging.  I got familiar with the technology and the skill of writing a blog post.  I even waded into the murky waters of SEO.  And at the end of it all, I had a new blog I named Midlife’s a Trip – to reflect my belief that we are on a journey of winding roads, bumps and detours that ultimately leads us to the better half of life.

At one point during my blog retreat, “Internet Guy”, my 32-year old IT professional son stopped over to see why I hadn’t called in a few days.  When he saw me with fingers glued to the keyboard and surrounded by blogging info I’d printed off the Internet, he started laughing as he compared my new passion to those bygone days when I collected bonsai trees and crystals.

Maybe Internet Guy is right, though.  I do have a new passion – and isn’t that what women in midlife do?  Aren’t we known for taking our creativity beyond where we’ve ever been before?  There’s a quote I love from Cecil Beaton that probably best describes this time of life where there’s so much space for exploration:

Be daring, be different, be impractical; be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, and the slaves of the ordinary.

Blogging has helped me find my true voice.  Online and in person, I now say what I mean and mean what I say.  It’s just that basic.  Blogging has liberated me from my role as a play-it-safer, creature of the commonplace and slave of the ordinary.

What about you?