Honesty time here: I started blogging because I thought it made me look cool.
It’s hard for me to remember that first blog, but my vague recollection is of a Blogger-hosted collection of thoughts and writings from my day. I even had a little counter on each post announcing how much money I had in my wallet (which was then usually between $5 and $30).
A friend or two from school read it. I think it was called “Altoid Pixie”.
My 6th grade class thought it was funny to be able to Google my name, but I missed the mark on the “coolness” scale. In my first year of blogging: My gym shorts were flushed down the toilet, a kid wrote “FAGGET” (yes, misspelled) on my locker door, and I dropped out of the race as class president early due to threats of violence.
Still, I soldiered on.
Since then, I haven’t gone a month without posting.
This blog, titled simply “Christian David Holmes”, has long been a pot of soup. I get an idea, toss it in, and hope people like the taste.
Sometimes I blog for myself. Sometimes I blog because I feel pressured to. Sometimes I blog just to make myself look cool. My readers are friends, family, and a few people I know only through their comments.
Until now, these posts have lacked a focus. And as I have watched, evaluated, looked at post ratings, comments, a rough picture of what I have to offer has taken shape.
The comments that touch me the most are from those who say, “me too.” My favorite emails, the ones that tell me my words made a stranger cry.
Words like these:
After reading this, I read a few more of your posts, and I find myself strangely at peace. Not that anything special or devastating has happened, nothing did, just that this is the sort of thing I needed to read. So, thank you for writing this.
And these:
At 59 years old, I just learned a lot from what you wrote and it reaffirmed what I know to be true. Thank you for being the real you.
These gifts have given me permission to consider the ability to make others feel better even as I explore my own insecurities. I am realizing that just posting my own emotions, worries, thoughts, can heal the same wounds for others. The crazy thing? Doing so heals me.
So after so much thought, and so many brainstorming sessions, beating myself up for not having something to teach, I understand that preaching isn’t what it’s about at all. It’s about connection. It’s about not being afraid. And it’s about being honest to myself, and to you.
And all I can hope for is that one day, when you’re browsing your email, and feeling alone in your anxieties, pain, confusion, you will open my post, and smile as you read your thoughts on the screen.
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You make me want to open up. You are the coolest thing on the internet and in news class, but Rochmis holds a close second
(He can see this can’t he?)