To Blog or not to Blog

It's been awhile since I've written here.  This space has unintentionally morphed into a place to share pictures and recap the dailiness of our lives.  There's nothing amiss with this.  I feel it's important to capture the ordinary and the everyday because when I look closely and lean in, I see that the mundane is often where the most magic lies. It's the wide angle shot where I'm witnessing an ordinary scene on the screen, but feeling how extraordinary it is before it fades.  It's all in the framing and perspective.  I see so much clearer from the outside looking in...from a distance...at the big picture. And retelling is a wonderful way to cultivate gratitude and appreciation.  In looking back, I have the ability to rehash and also to edit.  I can censor, cut and splice, but there are times I miss the candor and vulnerability that immediacy calls for. I miss the beauty in the broken and the richness found in raw emotion.  It's a struggle to come to terms with whether this is the place for it.  Whether the Internet is the place for it, and I'm quite sure I already have my answer.  Sometimes getting the answer is as easy as posing the question.

When I started this blog oh so many years ago, it was rather on a whim.  I never intended to go viral, promote a business, or write for others.  I liked to read blogs and I liked to write so it was rather natural.  I still read blogs, though not many.  And I still write just not very often here.  So things change and they stay the same and that is life.  This has never been the place to bare my soul or tell all. Three letters - www - are responsible for that, but it's getting trickier and feeling less natural to share at all here.  My kids are growing up, my feelings are getting more complicated, and the stories I need and want to tell are of the nature that they will strip me naked and leave me exposed.  Oh and probably royally piss off a lot of people I know or knew.  As a writer and a person, I strive to be authentic, vulnerable and honest.  It's a constant challenge thanks to the voice in my head and the world full of critics.

The blogosphere is as brutal as it is supportive.  Sometimes I cannot comprehend the level of vitriol it spews.  The mean girl snark, unfriendly competition, and utter lack of boundaries are cringe worthy, and at times down right uncomfortable.  Suffocating and paralyzing too.  It has the effect of making me hang on my every word even while I know and am thankful for the fact that I'm an unknown in this community.  There is something to be said for getting published posthumously.