A Bundle of Myrrh

I read this post yesterday and I agreed with what Bridget writes. It’s good to be reminded to blog with care and it made me think of all the reasons I blog as a mother, as a wife, as a woman.

So why do I blog?

Because I’m afraid I’ll forget.

Because I want to remember the great days.

I want to remember the bad days.

I want to remember that my babies make me laugh.

I want to remember that my babies make me cry.

I want to tell the world and my husband why I love him.

This blog is mostly for me. I know it’s public and I’m ok with that. I have no ambitions to expand, to have 100s of followers and 50 comments over how I put on my mascara or how cute my kids are at the park. They are really cute at the park by the way.

I blog because one day I hope my children are parents and I want to remember what it’s like to parent small children, middle children and big children. I want to remember that it’s amazing and that it’s really really hard.

I want to be able to help them. Perhaps they will look through the pages of this blog and learn something or laugh or just say sorry for smearing all that yogurt on the couch.

It is not my intention to hurt my children or embarrass them and I think at a certain age you begin to notice what will do that to your child and it becomes necessary to guard them and exercise prudence in a public place whether that’s the internet or at a church luncheon.

Blogging comes naturally to me. I know it’s not everyone’s thing. A lot of people just use Facebook as a blog. But I’ve always been one to want to write things down. I kept a journal before anyone even knew what blogs were. Remember journals?

I was also a ravenous photo snapper before digital cameras. With one I became a photo fiend! Blogging was the perfect outlet for those…habits.

And for one who would be living away from family and friends, a blog would become a bridge to close some of the distance between us.

I blog as an attempt to make sense of things, to remember great quotes I read and what I thought about those. I blog to share resources I find helpful and to record what we do with our days so I can look back and decide if I want to do the same thing or go in a different direction.

I blog so I can remember if I was as itchy with baby #3 as I am with baby #7 and to remember if it’s ever snowed before Thanksgiving as much as it has this year. I blog to note how I managed all the toys, organized the shoes and who came to Lily’s baptism.

But of course blogging comes with some risks. A public display of your life opens you up to criticism, the internet is a vulnerable place. It can be a source of undue pressure to be perceived other than you actually are and to write a post on every bit of your life, your every passing thought, achievement and failure or even every adorable thing your baby does.

Blogging reminds me of a poem by one of my favorite poets Billy Collins who writes in Consultation, about being a tourist who feeds “scenery into a hungry, one-eyed camera eager to eat the world one monument at a time.” For me, blogging can become a hungry camera that I need to get out from behind. To stop trying to record life and just live it.

There are times I think I’ll stop blogging and I do take breaks from it, usually unintentionally. Sometimes I think I’ll disconnect from cyberspace (that’s for you Katy) completely. But for now I want to keep up my blogging. Cautiously, lovingly. I enjoy it, it’s my only “creative outlet” if I can call it that.

And one more reason I blog. For you handful of readers. I love hearing from you! This place is just one more little way to connect and get to know you. I’m very thankful for my blog friends, for, as one woman put it, the friends that live in my computer. Thank you for reading, thank you for your comments, thank you for letting me know you’re even out there! It does this mama blogger good.

 

 

 

 

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 20th, 2014 at 2:20 pm and is filed under Figuring It Out, Reflecting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.