Becoming a Traveler

And so I begin the blogging. It's like starting a trip with Tom Bowyer, my beloved. He takes off full speed ahead before he does anything else. No effortful, intentional planning needed, no calculation of cost, no anticipation of possible problems, he just goes. You'll see this trait in action if you hang around on this blog long enough. It defines our story together. Makes it glorious, actually.

He has told me many times to start blogging. "You're a writer," he says, "so write and let people read it." And I think it through and excuse myself under pretenses of not knowing what to write. "Write a journal," he says. "You do it all the time." And I have little to say against that. Then, it comes to me, "But what if no one else wants to read what I write?" The conversation usually ends here. Until today, when a friend of mine, Mrs. Katherine Suzanne Ramsay Rhodes, brilliantly undermined all my efforts to keep from keeping a blog. She did it with a simple argument: "I need you to start blogging." Need is a strong word. Can I deny the request of my beloved Tom and the need of one of my dearest friends?

From here on out I will be officially journeying into the unknown. And I don't like the unknown. I am the traveler who routes her trip and looks up rates and dreads leaving, because she has never done it before, until she has actually begun. Then, the joy of the journey overpowers the fear. I am daring to become a traveler once again; I am beginning a blog.