It can be unnerving to write on the internet, to take what’s inside your mind, your heart, your deepest soul, and put it on the outside for other people to see. Possibly, the scariest part of writing publicly is the extent to which it makes you examine your own life and ask, “What’s interesting here?” It can be alarming to feel like the answer is often, “Not much.”

A coworker, Dave Martin, wrote about this on his own blog yesterday in a post called “Mundane.” Life gets routine. We go through the motions. Everything seems the same, day in, day out. When we sit down with the itch to write, we confront the question of, “What’s interesting here?” If the answer is, “Not much,” we might simply get back up without blogging.

Or, we might feel a smidge of horror: really, nothing? Am I boring? Do I feel alive? Am I engaging with the world around me? Am I making the most of this one wild and precious life? And then, because we’re faced with those horrors as we sit down at the page, maybe we’ll make a little change in our life. Maybe we’ll spice it up a little.

For whatever reason, I enjoy taking what’s on the inside and examining it through writing to put it on the outside, even though it feels scary and vulnerable. Pressing publish used to make my heart stutter and my stomach pitch a little. After doing it a few times, though, I realized that, weirdly, though I do not share physical space with readers, blogging helps me feel connected as part of the great web of humanity. Who among us has never felt scared or vulnerable?

I haven’t stopped thinking about Dave’s post. Water boiled in the kettle while my eyes scanned the screen. I thought, “omg, I can so relate,” and “oh, but there’s so much in the mundane that is beautiful!” as I pulled out a white porcelain teacup instead of our everyday stonewear. I poured hot water over dried chamomile blossoms and let the apple fragrance wash over me. When the timer dinged, I tipped the teapot spout and admired the yellow-golden liquid against the pure white porcelain of our fine China. These cups are so delicate that when I sip from their wafer-thin rims, I think of Willy Wonka’s edible teacup: I want to clamp my teeth on them and bite a piece off.