Matthew Knott

Read about how blogging has helped me keep it together.

Blogging to me, is like jogging to those fit types with a good life expectance, and for the same reasons, good health. Jogging allegedly brings good physical health but blogging can bring good mental health. 

The more I think about it the more I see similarities between jogging and blogging. Both require people of a certain mind set to be effective. Both give back more, the more you put into them, and both are at their best when you don't lie to yourself.

Why Blog?

A lot of people are afraid to blog because of what people might think. Well the good news the re is many people won't actually read what you write if yours is a general blog about life, and you're, like me, fairly uninteresting. Something to realise from the start is who you are blogging for: yourself.

This isn't everyones objective however, technical blogs form the basis of a huge community, and are indescribably important to technical communities. There are various subject specific blogs out there on activism, interests and other things. All these are great, a chance to show the world who you are and share your experiences. For me, I'd like to think this is a mix of all of those things. My blog is a quagmire or randomness.

Sanity, and how to keep it

Having a blog has kept me sane this past year and a half, I write about anything and everything, sometimes serious, other times interspersed with my own largely obscure sense of humour, but alway, I write down what's in my heart or on my mind, and I get to express what I'm feeling to, well, no-one in particular. The important thing is the action of writing and publishing, seeing the words in black and white, that instance of your life preserved, and available for people, if they so wish, to read and comment. If you're writing about life then 99.99999% of the people who read what you've written will be a friend or family, because people have little time for what's happening in a strangers life unless theres an element of celebrity or exceptional circumstance, that's just the way it is.

If you've got a lot on your mind, but you're not sure if a blog is the right way to go, do it anonymously, I did, in parallel to this one, but I'll get onto that in a bit. Blogging is a great release mechanism so give it a try if you feel under pressure or are trying to come to terms with something. This is what I did and it's helped me no end. On this blog I talk openly about my troubles with neighbours and other problems in life, my hopes, fears, plans, successes and failures. I worry I may be too open at times but it's not been a problem so far.

What all bar two of you don't know is that for a few months I've been running a blog anonymously as a coping mechanism to try and deal with / come to terms with abuse I suffered as a child. I seemed to get most of the blogging done in one night. The funny thing is that once I'd got down all that was bothering me, at lot of the pain and anguish went away, and has stayed away. I still carry it with me but the associated feeling of guilt is now all but gone. I'll write more about this further down the article.

How to blog?

Firstly, get a blog. There are a number of free online blogging services, although I find wordpress the best. I've written my own software for this site, which if anyone wanted they would be more than welcome to try.

Next, you need to write something, anything down. There are massively varying way to write a blog post, I prefer to write directly from the heart, although this doesn't always make good reading. I can only tell you about what I know and that's the way I find the biggest relief is gained. Writing any other way is to castrate your feeling, your reason for writing in the first place, and if you do that, then you're a walker not a jogger, and will not get the benefit of this hugely cathartic process.

You don't need to be a wordsmith either, a sprawling vocabulary is no substitute for heart-felt words that say exactly how you feel.

What have I got from blogging?

Blogging has given me an outlet I wouldn't normally have. I find it hard to construct all that I'm thinking into a spoken conversation, often I don't want to discuss, I just want to talk. I don't want to be talking to someone about a lot of these topics because they won't wait 5 minutes while you try to conjure what you're thinking into a coherent statement, which is what would happen to me. I don't know about you, but if I'm confident on a subject I can talk about it, programming for example. But when it comes to what I'm feeling it's not always clear, you have to think about it, and writing is often a great catalyst for getting those thoughts and feelings from you, there will be things you hadn't realised you felt at the start of a post. You may, for example, gain another point of view whist writing about an event, argument or other occurrence.

3 months ago I felt like I was on rock bottom. Anger at the problems caused by my neighbours was compounding with a secret pain I'd been carrying with me for some years, and the result was me losing my temper a lot, feeling true rage. That wasn't me and it wasn't someone I wanted to be. I had yet one other reason to hate myself and I decided I'd lived with it long enough.

I wanted to explain what had happened to me to my wife my the guilt and years of trying to suppress things made it so difficult to get the words out. One emotional night, through floods of tears I managed to tell my wife that I was sexually assaulted when I was 9. Telling her that was the most painful and emotional thing I've ever done in my life.

A few days after that I decided to set up a blog anonymously to talk about how I felt. I set it up anonymously because of the intense guilt and embarrassment I felt at the time. I wrote three or four posts, but after just that initial post writing about what happened I felt so much better. It was such a load off, I'd found a certain peace. 20 years it took me to mention this for the first time to a couple of close friends, as I wanted to test the water, gauge the reaction, and just say to someone I knew, hey, this happened to me, I think it had a big influence on how I am today, the good and the bad. Thinking about it now, it was a bit of a burden to put on them, I don't know how I'd react to being told that about a friend.

Blogging about it meant that I didn't have to repeat myself, I just directed them there and let them absorb it, and come back to me. This was about 6 weeks ago, although it feels so much longer. Now this, the first time I've openly said to the world what happened to me.

So there you have it, a first hand account of the power of blogging. Experts may say that everything before the last few paragraphs was a waffly build-up to what I just said but I genuinely want to show the power of blogging for yourself.