Happy first anniversary to Never Stationary!

Exactly one year ago today, I stifled my self-consciousness and started this blog. A year later, I am still churning away at the press and we haven’t seemed to lose steam. Of course, my last few posts have been few and in-between, but please forgive me, as my knees are practically giving in under the amount of work and effort that first-semester senior year requires of me.

We’ve come a long way, yes we have. My first few posts were rather structured: if I published a poem, it had to rhyme. I tried to write at least every other day, following writing prompt guidelines very closely. My primary sources of inspiration were writing prompt websites.

Now, I write free-form poems. Sometimes I publish three posts in a day, and sometimes I’ll go two weeks without posting anything. I pull ideas from tumblr pages and who knows where. Writing has become a whim, a crutch, a go-to de-stressing activity, and I know that I am a better person because of this blog.

Now for some rumination of my own:

Keeping a blog is strange. I don’t check my stats (which indicate how many hits this site gets per day) super often, but somehow over 365 days, I’ve accumulated 404 followers. THAT’S LIKE 1 PERSON A DAY, DONTCHA KNOW? I don’t know who they are or if they know me personally, but it’s super strange to know that my posts show up in the feeds of over 400 people.

I find that the feedback I get is invaluable. People from all over the internet comment and give me advice about how to improve my blog. A couple of months ago, I shut down my blog for a few days to reformat the site. Does anyone remember novice me, with the purple background and lack of pictures? Now, we’ve got a sleek, black new background, with pretty pictures to lure readers. The picture becomes the focal point; it draws people in.

Honestly though, the greatest part about this blog is not that random people in my life find out about it and somehow read through all of my posts, but it’s that I can read back through them myself.

Coming back to the name of this blog, the central theme that pretty much every post revolves around: Never Stationary!

Every post is reminiscent of a different time in my life. Every day is a different attitude, with a different voice, and no matter what the post, some aspect of that day is reflected through the words. Reading back on a dark day, I can scrunch my nose and smirk at how I thought my life was a mess at the time, and see how I eventually got over it. That way, when it seems like everything that can possibly go wrong is going wrong, I’ll be able to calm myself down.

Oh, I don’t know, readers. This blog is such a central part of my life, yet it’s also allowed me to branch out in ways that I never would have imagined. Who knew that I’d also join my school’s newspaper and become a music columnist? Who knew that I would have encouraged my friends to also start blogs for themselves? I can think of four instances where people have seen my blog and decided to create one too. My own sister decided to follow suit. She kept it up for months; I am so proud of her.

Of course, those that like writing for the purpose of writing should not just blog. I love this website to death, and I am absolutely content with my work on here, but I am the way I am today also because I write privately. These private journals are nothing like this site; they are ranty, they are irrational, and they are incoherent. They are angsty, they are emotional, and they are more than 50% of the time in all caps. I would not be able to post a fraction of those entries on this site. One issue that constantly plagues me is whether or not I should be posting more personal entries. Ought I to mention names? Should I write about my friends, the way that I used to? (This Kid I Know, anyone?) I have continually felt conflicted because it causes controversy in my life, do you know? People get upset and constantly misperceive my intentions. But the thing is…I don’t really care anymore. Obviously I don’t want people to think badly or take away the wrong idea when they read my posts, but I don’t want to let that sort of fear limit me and what I write here. I don’t want to write timidly in fear for what could happen, because then I create arbitrary and self-defeating barriers. That’s the opposite of what I want this to be. So, that concept shall stay in the back of my mind as I post from now on.

If you’ve not closed out of the window at this point, congratulations on getting this far!

Thank you for reading :) – Catherine