Blog Your Passion

By: Lorelle VanFossen

Nov 15 2012

Tags: blog writing, blogging, broadcasting, communication, interactivity, intercommunication, news, telephone pole, why blog, writing

Category: Writing

2 Comments

In 2010, I didn’t meet a woman who changed my life by talking to a telephone pole. I urge you to read my story.

She was clean, fairly nicely dressed in casual clothes, dark colored tennis shoes on her feet next to a giant flowered and overflowing shopping bag. Her dish water blond head was lifted high, hair dancing around the lines in her face as she threw her arms around with fierce determination and concentration, punctuating each point with another thrust of her fist or wave of her arms – all directed at a telephone pole.

It was a normal power pole found in the old parts of Chicago. Dark wood coated with centuries of creosote, wires running up its sides to connect in a mysterious tangle with the real web that powers and connects our lives together. We pass these poles many times along our paths to and from work, lunch, dinner, and home. While they are invisible to us, it was clear that this was not just any power pole to her.

I wondered if she had some special powers to send her magnificent points through the wires, across the city to the power and communication centers, then branch out through other cities, across the country, up and down and across more poles, until it reached the offices of those who need to hear what she had to say. A part of me hoped they were listening.

Still, it isn’t every day you see someone conversing with such passion, determination, and classy style with a telephone pole. I was impressed.

Then I was terrified. This was me! This is what blogging feels like. It’s me talking to the telephone pole. Blathering to the great virtual nothing, connected by wires both physical and virtual, hoping someone turns their head in my direction. Some days I might as well be talking to a telephone pole.

Every day I pump out articles and news bits on my passion, helping others to learn how to share their thoughts and feelings and skills with the masses, hoping to connect through the power poles to their offices, homes, and mobile devices, to find some connection, to reach through the wires and say, “Hey, what I have to say matters. What I have to say counts. What I have to say is something…well, you might need to hear. I know it will help. I know it will make a difference. I know that you will learn and blog better. to share your thoughts and expertise…at least I think you will…” Really, why do I bother.

Frozen in place watching the woman continue her impassioned speech on the flaws in health care, social welfare, the inability to protect its citizens from the greed and control of corporations, the crowd swirling around me, feet cemented to the sidewalk, a rock in the river, my entire thinking process shifted off its axis.

She is the modern day Don Quixote, tilting at telephone poles. Am I her Sancho Panza? Or another Don Quixote? Seriously, I’m going to have to think about this some more, because somehow, this woman has changed how I think about what I do.

Have you found your telephone pole moment with your blog?