I Am Fearless ...Sort of

What a journey blogging has been. I started off with a simple desire to keep in touch with my fellow isolated friends, moms who had chosen to stay at home with their kids and whom I had not seen or talked to in...a long time. I don't know about them, but I would periodically wonder what they were up to. Just in case they wondered the same about me, I thought I would feed a few tidbits on the blog. But just the best tidbits.

I displayed cute pictures of my kids, related cute antics, wrote brilliantly philosophical yet humorous pieces, and waited for the responses to come pouring in. Instead I got crazy comments from one sister and "don't you have anything better to do" kind of comments from my other sister.

My husband encouraged me to market my blog. Either he really liked what I had to say, or he really liked the idea of me earning money. I prefer to think the former. So I got busy marketing my blog. He turned my stat counter on. I perused countless blogs each day and left little snippets on their comment section, so that they would do likewise on mine. The husband signed me up for Facebook and set it so that every post would show up on my page. I actually objected to having a FB account! Today, in my thoroughly FB-obsessed state, I find that hard to imagine.

A funny thing happened once I had friends on FB. I started to censor what I wrote on my blog. If I wanted to comment on Prop 8, for example, I was afraid my gay or straight friends on FB would be insulted. I cared for these people, I didn't want them to be offended in such an impersonal manner as on a blog. Screw the strangers, but my FB friends were relatives, friends from college, neighbors who hadn't yet seen my bad side.

And so my well dried up. In my effort to please everyone, I ran out of things to say. Fortuitously, I also ran out of time to blog. Homeschooling had turned into a race for time each day. Even after my challenging son went back to school, I needed the extra time to play, read, and bond with the other kids, instead of just, say, telling them to shush and go away so that Mommy can complete a crucial but fleeting thought. Ironically, I just told my kids this during this paragraph.

My blog posts became more and more infrequent.Worse, they were lackluster. Eventually, I took my blog link off FB and resigned to return when the kids were older (like college-aged). 

Much to my surprise, I missed blogging. All these years, I thought writing was a chore, an essay analysis to be done for a Nathaniel Hawthorne novel. What I discovered through blogging is that I know more vocabulary words than I ever thought, I'm a better photographer than I thought, and I have more brain cells than I thought. Blogging trained me to look for highlights in my day to share. I was ready at all times with my camera to snap anything remotely interesting and even those things that were not. Each day, I actively searched for things to document. I was more present in my day. I miss that.

So I'm back. This time, I'm not going to market my blog. I will tell my sisters, of course, because what would I ever do without their crazy comments. But I'm not going to link my blog to facebook, and I'm not going to read other people's blog just so they'll read mine. Even if no one except for my sisters and hubby ever know I'm blogging again, I'll be happy knowing that my words are here on the internet, which as everyone knows, means it'll be here forever. This time, I'm doing it for the right reason.