Reasons not to blog
I am finding it harder and harder to blog with any regularity. I can think of three reasons for this:
1) many of those with whom I communicate electronically are on Facebook, and the quick pithy status update does much to both allow me my need to voice something and also others some insight on what's up with us...
2) my desk top computer was replaced with a home entertainment computer and now the new screen is mounted high ad 42" wide and the keyboard is a not at a desk. Great for tv. Not great for writing. I do almost all my computer work on my iPad, which I love, but typing on the touch screen is tough and makes for sometimes hilarious but mostly just frustrating typos...
3) but thirdly, SIGH, and here's the real truth of it: I don't know what to write.
I would like to blog things that are funny, poignant, insightful, wise. But in reality I do not feel like I have anything particularly funny, poignant, insightful or wise to share. I feel pedestrian, everyday, very unfunny, very unwise. if i were to start a new blog right now, I might call it "100 ways to fail at potty training", or "thought, interrupted".
We mothers of young children sometimes complain about how hard it is to have a conversation with others since we are constantly, constantly, constantly interrupted. It is a rare and special thing to have a friendship with someone who is not the mother of young ones, since it requires tremendous patience and grace on their part to get this quality of conversation from me: "oh, I'm so sorry to hear about the death of your fa....no, you may not have a cookie....oh, what was I saying? Yes, how are things going with the funeral arrange.... DON'T LICK YOUR BROTHER!!... I'm sorry, yes, you were saying..."
But I wonder too if I am not losing the ability to have a long, sustained conversation. Just last week I found myself without kids and talking to someone, and I ran out of things to say and was groping for words, all the time wishing one of my kids would appear so I could beg off and say "excuse me, I need to check on my kiddo..." Terrible, but true.
Today I was trying to explain to a friend what this season of life feels like. To me, it is not unlike those cartoon characters who run off the end of a cliff and are suspended in mid air, still running frantically, before the inevitable plummet to the ground. I feel like wile e coyote, having run off a cliff with no solid ground beneath me, running and running in the air - always in perpetual running posture, yet never going forward, and for the moment, not falling... Although it feels as though everything could come crashing down at any moment. Suspended animation (ha ha).
And yet I do still want to blog. Not least because last weekend when we visited Houston (worthy of a post of its own, but for that I need to brave the other computer), I woke up one morning to find 10 year old Abby reading excerpts from her mama's blog from when she was just 3 or 4. She read them to me and I remembered, and I smiled, and I LOVED hearing Abby read about young Abby, and remembering younger G and younger me I the words of the blog.
And so in years to come I want Teg to read that at the age of newly 5 she still calls mermaids "lurmaids", and will argue a blue streak should you try and correct her. She no longer calls yogurt "nogurt", or breakfast "beksiss"; but there are still many and varied wonderful things about this age and stage of life which I will forget if I don't blog it. I want to have a record of the fact that in his late 2's, Callum was convinced that his lightning McQueen pjs make him run faster, and that every night once they are on he runs laps from our room to his room and asks us to note his speed. Too precious. Blog-worthy.
We are a family learning on the go. One day all our kids will use the potty, and if I don't mention the years of character-building that is potty-training, perhaps I will forget that the process was long and humbling.
And so I will blog.
Even if it isn't funny.
Even if it isn't poignant or insightful or witty or profound.
I will blog even if no one reads and no one comments (although I love it when people comment!)
I will blog because there are some precious moments and thoughts and conversations which I still want to share with you now, gentle reader, but with my future readers too.
1) many of those with whom I communicate electronically are on Facebook, and the quick pithy status update does much to both allow me my need to voice something and also others some insight on what's up with us...
2) my desk top computer was replaced with a home entertainment computer and now the new screen is mounted high ad 42" wide and the keyboard is a not at a desk. Great for tv. Not great for writing. I do almost all my computer work on my iPad, which I love, but typing on the touch screen is tough and makes for sometimes hilarious but mostly just frustrating typos...
3) but thirdly, SIGH, and here's the real truth of it: I don't know what to write.
I would like to blog things that are funny, poignant, insightful, wise. But in reality I do not feel like I have anything particularly funny, poignant, insightful or wise to share. I feel pedestrian, everyday, very unfunny, very unwise. if i were to start a new blog right now, I might call it "100 ways to fail at potty training", or "thought, interrupted".
We mothers of young children sometimes complain about how hard it is to have a conversation with others since we are constantly, constantly, constantly interrupted. It is a rare and special thing to have a friendship with someone who is not the mother of young ones, since it requires tremendous patience and grace on their part to get this quality of conversation from me: "oh, I'm so sorry to hear about the death of your fa....no, you may not have a cookie....oh, what was I saying? Yes, how are things going with the funeral arrange.... DON'T LICK YOUR BROTHER!!... I'm sorry, yes, you were saying..."
But I wonder too if I am not losing the ability to have a long, sustained conversation. Just last week I found myself without kids and talking to someone, and I ran out of things to say and was groping for words, all the time wishing one of my kids would appear so I could beg off and say "excuse me, I need to check on my kiddo..." Terrible, but true.
Today I was trying to explain to a friend what this season of life feels like. To me, it is not unlike those cartoon characters who run off the end of a cliff and are suspended in mid air, still running frantically, before the inevitable plummet to the ground. I feel like wile e coyote, having run off a cliff with no solid ground beneath me, running and running in the air - always in perpetual running posture, yet never going forward, and for the moment, not falling... Although it feels as though everything could come crashing down at any moment. Suspended animation (ha ha).
And yet I do still want to blog. Not least because last weekend when we visited Houston (worthy of a post of its own, but for that I need to brave the other computer), I woke up one morning to find 10 year old Abby reading excerpts from her mama's blog from when she was just 3 or 4. She read them to me and I remembered, and I smiled, and I LOVED hearing Abby read about young Abby, and remembering younger G and younger me I the words of the blog.
And so in years to come I want Teg to read that at the age of newly 5 she still calls mermaids "lurmaids", and will argue a blue streak should you try and correct her. She no longer calls yogurt "nogurt", or breakfast "beksiss"; but there are still many and varied wonderful things about this age and stage of life which I will forget if I don't blog it. I want to have a record of the fact that in his late 2's, Callum was convinced that his lightning McQueen pjs make him run faster, and that every night once they are on he runs laps from our room to his room and asks us to note his speed. Too precious. Blog-worthy.
We are a family learning on the go. One day all our kids will use the potty, and if I don't mention the years of character-building that is potty-training, perhaps I will forget that the process was long and humbling.
And so I will blog.
Even if it isn't funny.
Even if it isn't poignant or insightful or witty or profound.
I will blog even if no one reads and no one comments (although I love it when people comment!)
I will blog because there are some precious moments and thoughts and conversations which I still want to share with you now, gentle reader, but with my future readers too.
posted by Bronwyn at 8:47 pm
3 Comments:
I'm so glad you are continuing. I enjoy reading your posts so much, and yes!, your children will be looking back at these pages. And when they are struggling to potty train their own (funny thought), you will remember what it was like a little bit better, and they will perhaps be able to remain positive when things don't go quite as planned.
p.s.
I can relate about losing words too and I only have 1 who isn't even walking or talking!
Bronwyn, we are all pedestrian. That said, no two of us are walking the exact same path and that means everyone is doing something that others will find interesting or odd or novel or bizarrely repulsive or whatever. As long as you avoid that last one, your blog writing'll be groovy.
I like it anyway!
Tim
P.S. It was great to see that baby being dedicated on Sunday.
P.P.S. Some guy who blogs in Afrikaans is now following my blog. The interwebz has made this an even smaller world.
Thanks friends!
(And Tim, I can translate if you would like!)
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