Author: dearmesuzanne

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

• Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
• Because it will help you focus your own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

• Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
• What topics do you think you’ll write about?
• Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
• If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.

Everyone should visit rock bottom at least once in their adult life. I highly recommend the trip. There is nothing like coming within a hair of losing everything, including your life, and then having the gift of starting over.

My rock bottom with alcohol happened in 2013, after an 18 year binge. Once I “got sober”, as alcoholics like to call it, my life became infinitely better and the promises of sobriety as defined in The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous came true to me. The gifts of sobriety have made every moment of staying sober worth it. But, my emotional rock bottom didn’t happen until the last 12 months. The term “emotional sobriety” means that you are doing the work that it takes to not need to drink, use, etc.

Being able to regulate emotions is a ton of work. It requires having the courage to face your fears, your flaws, your cringeworthy mistakes and own them all. I have realized that drinking just one way I acted out to escape my feelings. Other addictions have been food, shopping and work. Yet beyond even those addictions, the biggest addiction has been my addictions to finding and feeling love. This addiction has chased me since I was 9 years old. It resulted in me eventually trading my hopes and dreams for a last place prize of simply saying “I must not be alone because I have this person.”

The purpose of this blog is to dive into what caused me to seek attachments to others and what I have discovered about being me. It is in a sense a letter to myself, from the Spirit that resides in me.