Welcome to Part 4 of a special collaboration with Annie over at Tales of a Family! We’ve had so much fun sharing our journeys and working on this together, and we’ve found that we have a lot in common. It’s been the most wonderful way to get to know each other, a celebration of friendship, and an exploration of writing and stories and how creating grows and changes with us. I hope you enjoy the reading as much as we’ve enjoyed the writing. It’s hard to believe this will be the final post in the series, but I think we’ll work together again in the future. I’m looking forward to it!

Annie’s Part 4: What Matters Most

After ten years of writing, remembering, and sharing stories, I discovered that the greatest treasures are not always the stories themselves, but the people they bring into our lives. When I first started Tales of a Family, I thought I was simply preserving memories. I wrote about my family, the past, and the people who shaped me. I gathered our stories and history before time carried them too far away. At the time, I did not understand how much this journey would grow beyond my family history.

Over the years, my blog has become more than a collection of memories; it has become a place of connection. Certainly, I treasure the readers who have taken the time to visit, read, comment, and share their own memories.  Every kind word, thoughtful response, and personal reflection has meant more than I could ever possibly say. Sometimes a comment has reminded me that stories have a way of reaching hearts we may never meet in person.

Those comments have encouraged me to keep writing, even when I doubted myself. They reminded me that ordinary moments can stir something familiar in someone else. A story about a porch, a mountain road, a childhood memory, a dear pet, or a person long gone can help another person remember something precious from their own life. That has always been one of the beautiful things about storytelling. Our memories may have begun as our own, but once we shared them, they often became a bridge to someone else’s heart.

Through the years, I have treasured the friendships that have grown through this journey. Some friendships began through shared stories, kind messages, blog comments, or a mutual love for writing or family history. Others deepened because storytelling gave us a new way to connect.

This blog has helped me look at life differently. I started to view my life with more gratitude. I have begun to notice the small moments, the quiet blessings, and the people who make this life so meaningful. It has helped me understand that a treasured life cannot be built only on grand events, but on everyday love. 

To every reader, friend, family member, and fellow storyteller who has been a part of this journey, thank you.  Your encouragement has always been one of the greatest treasures of all.

The stories may have started with my family, but over time they have become part of something much larger: a shared place of memory, connection, friendship, and heart.

And that will be something I will always treasure.

Katie’s Part 4: What Matters Most (and What Comes Next)

Thank you.

I feel like I need to start there, before anything else.

(But I should probably also add some context.)

Here we are. This is Part Four of our collaboration, and honestly, it’s the one I’ve been least eager to write. Thinking about what I treasure most – the connections and the friendships, the growth, the creative community around me – that should be joyful and fun. And it is! It absolutely is. It is also overwhelming.

Ten years, y’all. I’ve been here plugging away at A Virginia Writer’s Diary for ten years. That’s a long time, and I feel like there’s just so much I could say. I could fill pages and pages, and I’m struggling trying to condense everything down.

(Seriously. This is currently my sixth attempt to even get started. If it sticks, I won’t delete this note, and everyone can laugh. Writing is hard sometimes, you guys.)

I thought I’d get very specific writing this. I don’t think I can. I think I need to come at this another way. So here it goes…

I remember when I started this blog. I felt hopeful and excited, but aimless. Then I remember when it came alive during 2020. I decided to be brave, and started posting poetry and short stories. The comments I got were all so nice, so encouraging, and they made me want to do better. So I kept posting, and I kept writing. I posted things I knew weren’t my best work, because to get anything out there at all felt better than to contribute nothing. I don’t strive for perfection anymore. I try to do better than I’ve done before, to take lessons away from lackluster dialogue and lines of poetry that don’t quite fit. I am part of this community, and I want to be there, to be present and to give something whenever I can.

It’s hard to mention specific readers and comments and followers, because while I certainly engage more prolifically with some blog friends than with others, I value everyone who stops by and leaves a like or a comment. And I enjoy reading your work, even on days when I don’t have the free time or the free hands to type a response of my own. I’m grateful to everyone out there who reads and writes and creates and inspires me to do the same.

We are a community. We’ve supported each other through the bad moments – 2020 and tough elections and tragedies and uncertainty – and through good moments, too – getting published, finding new jobs, starting at college, seeking help and therapy. I read your posts and feel like I’m not alone, and I want you to know you’re not alone, either. I see you. I read your work. I appreciate your art.

Thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for being here and doing what you do. It’s been a journey, from 2016 until now, and I can’t wait to see where we go from here.

So, what comes next?

Well, first, I can’t truly conclude things without saying that I’ve loved every bit of this collaboration with Annie, and I hope we can do something similar again soon! Please go check out her blog, Tales of a Family. It’s wonderful and heartfelt, and I’m so glad she and I have been able to connect through this project. It just encapsulates everything I enjoy about being here on WordPress.

I love creating. I love cooking and making music. I love decorating my home and making it a space that feels full and happy. I love coloring with Lucy and building towers out of her Picasso Cubes. I love writing. I love connecting with other people. Most of the time, I love people.

It’s going to be an interesting next chapter for all of us creators, I think, as we move deeper into the age of AI. When I think of what comes next, I think of how beautiful and human and imperfect we are here, putting ourselves out there in all of our not-quite-right glory. Sharing stories that go on too long or end too soon, poems that don’t sync to the rhythm we had in our heads, artworks that don’t pop the way we wanted, essays that just can’t truly convey what we’re thinking.

We are perfect in our imperfections. That sense that what we’ve created isn’t done, that it could be better, that’s our spark of the divine. We are not stagnant, and we are never totally complete. We grow and change every day. Our creating does, too.

I don’t know quite what I want to do next here on A Virginia Writer’s Diary. I want to get back to posting more often, and to writing short stories. I miss writing short stories. I’d like to start something longer form – a novel, if you will, in parts that I post once a week or once a month. I think that would be amazing, and a really interesting challenge. I want to follow more of your blogs, and engage more with what you’re creating. I live in Virginia, but I want to make a space on my little corner of the Internet that’s bigger and more than just my world. I invite you to do it with me. We’ll have fun. 

I want to grow. I want my writing to grow. I want my community to grow. I want us to create together and go to bed at night knowing that no one and no machine could ever do it quite the same way.

And I want to keep going, keep growing and keep creating, for as long as I can.