I do a lot of thinking. Like all the time. My brain never stops, there is always something being mulled over, concocted, questioned. I’m your quintessential Gemini and lemme tell you, it’s quite a ride.
When this blog started over 2 years ago it was truly a brain dump and a running journal while I trained for the 2017 Chicago Marathon. I started writing about it because, per usual, I had all the things to say and only so many ears to listen. So I typed. And told my story.
Finisher 🙂 
Fast forward 2 years and while I’m no longer training for a marathon, I am living a colorful, complicated, stressful, joyful, rager of life here in the south suburbs of Chicago. I’m still a mom of 2 kids, still a wife to my can’t-live-without-him-even-when-he-annoys-me-and-I-drive-him-crazy husband and still having the urge to say all the things that are jammed up in my head.
But I’ve started to ask myself recently, Why? Why am I compelled to write and talk and share and make known what I know and connect with those who might know the same or, god willing, more?
What’s the point of this?
*cue existential crisis music*
Ha. Just kiddin…kind of. Stay with me here…
Around the time I began asking myself this, in regards to this blog, not my life in general (could you imagine? My brain, with that question? Ugh, exhausting) I came across an old Carson Pirie Scott box (R.I.P for all my Chicago homies) in my mom’s basement.
In it was the usual lifetime of schoolwork; projects and report cards and assignments with faded pink highlighter stars on them. As I sifted through the mass I started to realize, and remember, a central theme to my childhood and schooling; I loved to write. I wrote stories and poems and plays and the beginning of a t.v. script that stared me and Leonardo DiCaprio (duh). All through my school years I scored super high on all Language Arts while feeling like Math and Science had been put on Earth for my own personal torture.
I have, somewhere, a collection of journals and notebooks spanning nearly 2 decades of my life. I had a Xanga page; major points if you recall and even MORE major points if you had one. Xanga was one of the first online journals in the early 2000s, pre Myspace, and I adored mine and was so incredibly emo about it. I wrote for my college newspaper, I has a short lived and really annoying blog in my 20s that is so cringe-y to think about. I’ve had a list of book ideas in the Notes section of my phone for years.
Bottom line, myself and the written word? We’re likethis.
So as this blog turned from a runners journal to something more whole life, I asked the question and here’s what I got back; for the love of stories. For the love of sharing. For the love of putting something into the world that might effect the day, hour or moment of someone else in a positive way.
Along with the desire to write all the words in my head, hearing the stories of others satisfies my intense curiosity about the world and the people in it. I often find myself having to take a beat and remember that too many questions isn’t always polite, I will devour an autobiography be it good or bad, I will sit and talk and ask questions till the sun comes up or Baker’s Square kicks us out.
And above all, I believe that everyone has a story to tell and an undeniable right to be heard. The sharing of stories is cathartic, it’s powerful, it’s entertaining, it’s important. Through the stories of others we connect and expand our worlds and maybe find shared ideas, instincts and experiences. We maintain our primitive need to be communal.
So that’s why. That’s the reason I keep this minuscule corner of the internet for myself. And why I hope to create a space for others to share and learn and get all the things out of their jumbled heads.
I thank you for reading. I thank you for sharing. I thank you for taking a minute to consider something new.
Happy New Year friends!
xoxo
Katie
