Blogs, & The Bloggie Bloggers who Blog Them

A couple of years have now passed and I imagine myself to have enough clout to write on the business of blogging.

Blogging.  Blogging. Blog.  The word used to bring me such excitement!  Such drive!  Inspired ambition!  Life became the stage and I the critic.  All performances catalogued, reviewed, sealed with a snapshot.  In the beginning there was blogging and I awoke daily to the challenge of networking.  I poured over similar blogs, popular blogs, dream blogs.  I left comments, posted links to my site.  I relished the growing number that appeared daily in my statistic bar. I asked for advice on growing my blog.  I sought out ways to make a little money.  I dreamed of being Pioneer Woman.

I banked it all on the fact that if I could just get my words out there for five years, I would gather a sort of cult following.  My family was quirky, messy, and supreme enough to get noticed.  I am intelligent, witty, and hilarious…that makes my opinion WORTH something.  Word of blog had only to spread and all my dreams would come true.

Then I began to notice…I am a dime a dozen.  Everyone and their mother is blogging about the same things.  Children who annoy them.  Family members who annoy them.  Pregnancies.  Marriage.  Crafting.  Cooking.  Cleaning.  Politics.  We are all self appointed despots with a “message”.

Suddenly, I felt a small needling in my ribs.  What is my blog?  A mish mash of other blogs, stuck in the Master Format of Blogging Perfection?  Blog.  Blogging.  Blogging.  The word began to sound more like a belch accompanied by mornings breakfast.  Sour.

I spent a huge amount of money for the “real blogger camera”.  I WOULD have spent more, had I had the money. In fact, it bothered me that I didn’t have the Nikon D90 longer than I would like to admit.  I could not walk outside, or do something with my children without obsessing over a photo op.  The pictures were there only  to say, “Look at me!  I am a good mother.  I am worthy!  Tell me I am worthy!”  It was like high school all over again.

High school.  Blech.  Competing with people who never gave a darn and who have even less bearing on my life now.  Not something I want to repeat.  Ever.

So what does an aspiring blogger who is suddenly disaffected with blogging do?  Do I lay it aside?  Do I keep going, but this time with eyes wide open and ears pricked?  Do I write what I want, how I want, when I want and not give a rip about who is reading?  Wordless Wednesday, Flashback Friday, and Gratituesday be damned!  If I want to put up 20 pictures, or not, while I am cooking, I can.  Do I step out of the shackles that are chained to an anvil marked “Waiting For The World’s Approval”?

For now, I am thinking.  I will keep thinking.  About the big stuff.  What do I want to be a part of?  Who am I trying to be?  Does the world tell me who I am?  Am I who God wants me to be?  What is the role I was meant to play in His world?  Am I helping my fellow man, or standing on his head?  Am I leaking love all over the place, so much so that it gets on other people?

That’s the big stuff.  For those things…keep your camera in the case.  Just open your arms.  Wide.

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This much is true…

Now that I am WELL into my 30’s I have learned some things about life on this rock.  Some of those things are stupid, pointless, and just plain stink.  Some of those things I wish I had known when I was young, but alas, I didn’t, so there.

I have learned that opinions are truly like bottoms.  Everybody has one.  Hopefully.  If you don’t have one, I certainly did not mean to offend.  I just didn’t want to use the OTHER word associated with opinions.  For every belief there is an equal and opposite belief.  I have learned that no matter what one believes in their heart of hearts, it may not stop them from taking a polar opposite stance just to tick someone off.  Or, in some cases they will pipe in with a “here, here” and an “amen” at whatever you say, then criticize you for it as soon as you leave their presence.  Oh well.  Gotta love ’em/me.  (We ALL do it.)

I have learned that I am capable of so much more than I ever realized.  The thirties have brought me a sense of stability, at least physically.  I know that if I want to learn a new dance, a new craft, make art, I CAN do it.  All I have to do is put my mind and body to it.  I may fail a billion times, but I can get it.  In fact I “get” a lot of things now that eluded me as a gangly teen.

I have learned the ridiculousness of things that were taught to me as a child.  Everyone goes through this discovery.  Not everything we were taught in school was kosher.  Some of it was down right stupid and blatantly skewed.  Most of it was part of a grand social experiment still running to this day.  I believe the division in this country is the manufactured result of all that garbage.  Someday the results will be printed in the New England Journal of Medicine or Psychology Today.  After that we will all get mad and go home.  Maybe we will go back to cooking over a fire.  Who cares?  It wouldn’t matter anyway.

I have learned that people will blow your mind.   Either with their being completely daft, completely amazing, or completely maniacal.   I have found there is little room for much else in daily life that isn’t a partial shading of those three traits.

I have learned that life can be sucked up by stupid, mindless activities that waste years of perfectly good time and air.

I have learned that truth, faith, nature and time are treasures.  These are NOT renewable resources.  Make war for them.  Guard them.  They count.  They have meaning.  Without them love is impossible and unimaginable.   They take your breath away.

King Solomon must have been in his 30’s when he wrote Ecclesiastes.  Chasing the wind is all we do.

….and it’s amazing.

Uh Oh. Confession time.

For many moons I have wondered what a certain feeling is.  How can I describe it…hmmm….it’s like a stomach churny thing, with mild belching.  It usually happens when someone I am friends with has good news, has crocheted something,  wins the lotto, gets a free home remodel, groceries for 10 dollars.  They share, I gush.  Then, I go home and think about it.  First excited and then kinda antsy.  I would scratch my head and think. “What is that?”  After a few Facebook posts from the blessed person, I go from fizzy to flameballs.   Something that makes me so happy over the moon for someone else, slowly starts to make me feel kinda…jealous.  OMGosh.  I am jealous!

I AM A JEALOUS PERSON!  OKAY?  Sweet relief, I said it.  It’s bad!  Do I dare speak how bad it is?  Why not.  I thought it was being slightly competitive.  Then I thought, maybe, I just really like all the stuff the other person is doing. Uh-no.  It’s because I am ugly inside and jealous of everything!  I want to be a super couponer!  I want to have seven kids.  I want to homeschool!  I want to crochet and craft all day!  I want to have an awesome website with grain free recipes, because I am grain free.  I want to invent a device that cancels out all other devices while baking a 10 tiered chocolate cake.

And, and, and you know what???  I am the worst KIND of jealous person.  I blog about how unnecessary it is to be SUPERMOM, all while crocheting my cape!  I am a self enabler!  “It’s okay, we all struggle with jealousy.”  Well, I am exposing it.  I need help, prayer, songs, and poems.   If you know me, I have been jealous of you at one time or another.  Yeah I admit it.

Don’t hate.  It’s not like I am sitting around thinking of ways to destroy people.  It’s not a “death list” kind of jealous.  It’s more like a “boo hoo- I’ll NEVER be as good as so and so!!!”  (stomps feet).  I am a brat.  I can admit that too.

Now that its out there, I want to defeat it.  It’s kept me from FULLY being an AMAZING friend.