Since I don’t start my new job (as a real-life nurse) until next week, I’ve had a lot of time to catch up on my favorite blogs. You can see them over to the right. These, and other blogs I read, are a mix of real-life friends, and total strangers.  Before I started reading strangers’ blogs, I totally didn’t get it. Why would I want to read about the day-to-day happenings of a total stranger? Well, who knew, it’s one of my favorite parts of my day.

One of the blogs to the right is written by a woman in Chicago that I have never met. I originally found her blog through Facebook, through a friend of a friend of a friend. You know. It was the first blog I started to read. I’ve been reading it religiously for over a year. Though it sounds a little voyeuristic, and a little bit weird, I totally don’t care. She is a fantastic writer. Her writing reads in a way that feels like she effortlessly pulled the thoughts from her head and placed it on the page, without second guessing a word. I laugh, smile, and occasionally cry while reading her posts. Her blog is interesting to me because, except for some serious tragedies, I feel her life parallels my own, but she’s two years ahead of me. I also envy the way she is able to freely write about her emotions.

Sometimes I think I started this blog to get more in touch with myself. I am not good a verbalizing my emotions, much less writing about them. Writing this blog has made that very apparent to me. The slowness of writing about your life allows the time to second guess every thought, every word.  It shows me what thoughts I hide from which people, and what thoughts I hide from myself. I then am forced to consciously choose if I will continue to hide that thought from anyone. It’s like doing an audit of emotional habits. I’ve found it’s allowed me to grow and mature in ways that I already thought I’d grown. This has made my life better, happier.

Didn’t Socrates say something about the unexamined life?