Someone recently asked me why I blog, and it stopped me for a second. Not because I didn’t have an answer, but because the obvious answer – that it makes me more attentive – felt too small for what it actually gives me.
Every day, I walk. From Point Loma down toward Ocean Beach, the same stretch of coastline, the same salt air, and yet never the same walk twice. Somewhere along the way, I stopped just moving through the scenery and started paying attention to it. I listen more. I hear more. I see more. And I’ve come to believe that everything around me – a conversation drifting past, a dog straining at its leash, the particular way light hits the water at a certain hour – is trying to teach me something. My job on that walk is simply to notice it and figure out what it’s saying.
If I had to title my blog, it wouldn’t be clever or branded. It would just be: walking the streets, Point Loma to Ocean Beach, every day, paying attention to life. That’s it. That’s the whole premise.
But there’s something underneath the walking, too – a restlessness to keep creating. I paint when I can. When I’m not painting, I write. Lately, I haven’t been painting, so I’ve been writing instead. The medium changes, but the impulse doesn’t: I need an outlet for whatever I’m absorbing, and I need to shape it into something.
Here’s the part I take seriously, though: once I decide to share something, I don’t treat it casually. I know that if even one person stops scrolling to read what I’ve written, that’s their time – time they’re choosing to give me instead of something else. So I sit with it. I revise it. I ask myself if it’s actually worth that person’s attention, or if I’m just filling space. I want it to be compelling enough to stir something in someone, even quietly. Not for applause, but because I believe words carry a responsibility. If I’m putting something into the world, I’d rather it lean toward good – for the reader, and honestly, for the planet too.
So why do I blog? Because walking taught me to pay attention, and writing is how I try to pass that attention along hopefully in a compelling insight that will resonate with the reader and compel some type of positive activity to better people and planet.
Ok back to walking…