Relationship With My Blog, Abbie’s Adventure Dairies

My blog, Abbie’s Adventure Diaries (A.A.D.), is my shrink. For those not accustomed to the urban dictionary, it means a psychotherapist. This is how I describe my relationship with my blog. If I were to imagine A.A.D. as a person, it would be the one in the desk chair with a psychoanalysis journal noting down my words and thoughts while I reclined on a tufted leather sofa in a fantasy state of mine. I strongly discourage that you derive automatic conclusions about my sanity. 

A good shrink pulls you through your troubles. I began blogging sometime in 2001 for the sake of venting and publishing poetry/prose online. Seeing my thoughts translate to words and appear in cyberspace in digital print is therapy to my soul. I realized that I had a lot of opinions, creative expressions, and questions and the social majority was always of the foolish who were unwilling to listen. When I took to blogging, and found an audience that cared for my creative contributions, I found a renewed sense of self-esteem in those troubled teen years. 

At #almost30 I feel that back when I was not a blogger I was a hermit with a pen and paper. I was introduced as a writer but nobody knew my creative identity. As I emerged as a blogger, people around me began to view me as a poet, an adventurer, a chef, a homemaker. A.D.D. has given me a social identity. As my psychological motivator, A.D.D. broke the shell I was living in.

This shrink also offers me a powerful support system. The fellow bloggers around me are like a secret support system. For instance, as a newbie blogger in early 2001, I found a fellow blogger who shared similar strange arts, fashion, and lifestyle interests as mine. I wore leather bracelets, metallic studs, and wrote terrifying poetry. I learned that it should not be hidden but shared because it does not mean I am a freakshow of nature. I was simply Gothic. The blogger friend appreciated my work, and many others followed. I wasn’t insane to be writing about death and depression after all. There are all sorts of people I have connected with in the beautiful blogosphere and they reassure me that there is no such thing as weird. Normal just has different perceptions and you must find your niche to fit in.

At the end of the day I am a complicated individual. Period. I need a place for free-writing, reflection, creative expression to discover myself, resolve my inner conflicts, and vent my anger constructively. A.D.D., like a sincere life partner, a perfect shrink, takes all of that. It is a safe haven where I can express without being judged. All I need to do is put a Parental Advisory sign at the top and we are good! 

Published in Bloglanders Issue 1