Wine tasting over the weekend. This is my brain on wine:

Should I keep blogging?

I’m bored by blogs. Most of them recycle the same content over and over. Everyone in the blogosphere is an expert, and non-experts seek advice from the experts on how to become one. If you want to be successful as an A-List Blogger, you need to help your readers: you need to solve a problem or fill a need. Which basically means you have to be a teaching blog or a how-to blog. I don’t want to have a teaching blog or a how to blog. I want to tell stories. I think I tell pretty good stories. Here’s a fun story I wrote about giving my phone number to a homeless guy and here are some fun stories about my old scooter, Scottie.

Anyway, if I find the medium unappealing, what is the purpose of contributing to it? I can’t decide.

How does food affect my being?

Notice I didn’t say, “How does food affect my body?” During the month of February, I did a 21-day cleanse. It was the first time I’d ever done anything like it and it really was an amazing experience. The purpose of a cleanse is to detox your system, clean out the liver and essentially reset your digestive tract.

Good news: Not only did I lose 12 pounds (yay!), but also I was more in tune with my body than I’ve ever been in my entire life (not exaggerating). I had to pay attention to things like, how often am I peeing? Am I really hungry, or should I just have a glass of water? Can I really go for THAT long without bread? It’s bread we’re talking about here. Bread.

(Also. Apparently I am something of a trendsetter because no less than 10 people I know decided to, or want to do the cleanse after I did.)

Bad news: in the last 2 months since being off the cleanse, I am back to being my bloated, sometimes constipated, grumpy-in-the-morning and moody self. So the question remains: how does food (and which foods) affect my being?

What’s really important to me?

Without getting into a bunch of boring details, I’ve also recently been dealing with some major health issues. And if you think about it, the idea of losing your state of good health brings pretty much everything into perspective, doesn’t it? I mean, if you don’t have the energy to participate in every networking event available (because of your health), is attending any of them even important to begin with? If poor health kept you from doing more than one social outing per week, would you choose a networking event where everyone puts on their fake selves or would you choose to meet up with a college friend you haven’t seen in 5 years?

How can I tell stories more effectively?

Rather, how can I actively help others with the power of vulnerability and my propensity for it? Remember back up under the question about whether I should continue blogging, the part where I was talking about having to help readers by solving a problem or meeting a need? Yeah, see, the thing that I’m best at in the world is being vulnerable. This poses a huge problem, because how does one turn being vulnerable into something that meets a need or solves a problem? It’s not something you can package very easily and it’s definitely not something you can sell. But when I tell stories, the response is always positive and something like “wow, I’ve felt/experienced/dealt with that same thing, but thought I was the only one.”

Logically this means that the simple act of sharing does help others. As long as there are others to receive what I have to share.

So should I stop blogging?

If sharing vulnerable stories helps others, what does that mean for me if I stop blogging? See the dilemma? It’s a catch 22, right? A vicious circle.

Well, maybe not. I can use a different medium to tell stories. And if I choose a different medium, I can provide an outlet for others to share their story as well. That is how I came up with the idea for Under the Gum Tree.

I still haven’t decided whether I will keep blogging or not. But in the meantime, my energies are focused on continuing to contemplate these things and produce the first issue of Under the Gum Tree.

I would love to hear from anyone about the project, whether you’d like to contribute or you just have an idea. And, please, help spread the word.