When I started blogging over 3 years ago, it was all a bit of a lark. Just a way to let my endless family know what was going on in our household without calling all 54368926 relatives to spread the news as Jack started hitting his milestones.
Somewhere along the way, it became something else entirely. Slowly, it evolved into a way to stretch my atrophied writing muscles, an exhibitionist journal of sorts, and a catalog of my relationships with T, the boys, and mental illness.
When I finally gave in and got a stat tracker (Hello person who found me by googling "clogged milk ducts"! a heating pad will help clear that right up...) I was floored by how many people are actually tuning in to read what my addled brain spews out.
The internet is such a strange medium. This whole "web 2.0" thing still freaks me out more often than not, because it's so... open. So out there. Basically all of the things I am not in my every day life. But it appears that, without having a clue, I have been opening up to an audience. Something I would never have done in the past, especially if I had realized it was happening.
Hello, Internet!
I am generally plagued by self-doubt in my writing - my own worst critic, so far. (That is until the hate mail begins rolling in. And all indications point to "yes" that it WILL eventually start rolling in.) When I realized what a "blogger" was, and that I had been doing it for quite some time with no idea that's what I was doing, I started reading other blogs. Many. Many. Other. Blogs. I suddenly felt very much like a poser. Here were people more articulate than I, more educated, more confident... many of whom get paid for their writing, or have had a career in a public forum at some point.
I still feel like a poser, but I'm beginning to realize that the same reasons I began writing about my life in honest terms still apply - I write this for me, to vet the chaos in my head and let myself in on what's really going on in my brain. To record stories for the boys: stories about themselves, but also to represent me. Because one day I will be gone, and I will be able to leave them with this snapshot of who I was when I was young.
If anyone else finds some value in it, well.. that's just the icing on my giddy schoolgirl cupcake.
So, again... Hello, Internet! Welcome to my fishbowl. Don't forget to tip your waitress. And in the words of the unsinkable Jon Stewart... Yahtzee!
tags: shoutout
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