Turns out posting about not having friends is a good way to make friends, and also that as soon as your social calendar starts to fill up, your church calendar gets busy too. So I haven’t been online much, or writing. I know you’ll be shocked when I tell you that I haven’t had time to miss the part of my surfing that was aimless: I’ve been too busy snuggling with Spot, nagging Dick to come and play with us, and listening to Sally read to Susan (is there anything sweeter?).
But I do miss the linky interwebby awesomeness (to quote BooMama) and writing is like any exercise — stop for any length of time and you can’t think of a single reason why you should risk muscle strain while getting all sweaty and out of breath.
Why is it easier to be either completely plugged-in or totally disconnected?
This afternoon, after being “on” all morning at church, I got to hide myself away in my room while the kids napped, lazing around next to Dick’s warm body, and reading a book cover to cover.
That the book was an enjoyable half-historical romance with some deeper themes by Barbara Michaels (Elizabeth Peters) was almost incidental. I found myself thinking that jail time or physical incapacitation of some non-contagious sort wouldn’t really be very bad if I had an unlimited supply of escapist fiction.
Patriot’s Dream was published the year before I was born, but I laughed (OL) at what could have been Barbara Michael’s ahead-of-her-time indictment of blogging:
“. . . I don’t approve of this self-pitying verbal diarrhea known as catharsis; but there are times when people have to spit out what’s bugging them, get it out of their system.” (p. 296)
Last week I read a really unfortunate thread on a Mormon group blog about the relative scope and merits of mommy blogging.
Sometimes I wish my blog were more about writing, or cultural statements, rather than mommy moments. Or that I at least had a profound commentary to offer about the mommy moments: universal truths gleaned or profound insights gained from the daily struggle against temper and tantrums and teenagers-to-be.
But I don’t, and whenever I’m moved enough by something other than cute buns and chubby knees to write outside my self-circumscribed sphere, it’s usually because something is bugging me so much I simply have to get it out.
I’m pretty sure that’s no way to launch a writing career.
Why is it easier to be either completely happy with the life that is and the duties of the day or totally dissatisfied and convinced that ambition is the answer?
This week I’m talking about blogging at a church lady night on family history. Dick and I were talking about it as we drove home from a family dinner. He was pointing out all the different things blogging is and does for me. I got a little frustrated, because I’d told him the spiel was supposed to be about blogging for family history. Period.
And I did tell him that, this morning, as I answered the questions for Sally’s spotlight, I looked back through a month’s worth of posts, trying to come up with a “short, funny story” about Sally. I finally wrote about the time that we took Sally to the zoo in Cairo and paid the zookeepers (it was their idea) to let the giraffe eat food off Sally’s head.
This was the first time I ever remember looking at old posts on my blog and being happy with what I saw. I am relieved to say I’m proud of what has come from my fingers. I own it, and for now I’m not ashamed that my life and concerns are rather narrow.
That life and those concerns are much different than I had envisioned, and, yet, that doesn’t make them wrong (duh). I’ve mostly stopped apologizing to others for not being smart or coordinated enough to do it all (whatever it “all” is). Now I just need to stop apologizing to my eighteen year-old self. What did she know anyway?
Jane
(If you have any thoughts on blogging for family history purposes, I’d appreciate hearing them before Wednesday night.)
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Part of the reason I don’t blog as often as I’d like is that I don’t want to write (too often) about mom-moments. I want to make profound political statements that will cause people to scratch their heads and think, to comment on local inequities that will spur people to action, to live and write about my faith in a way which will encourage the fallen back into the fold.
The inspiration for my blog is my mom. She wrote a column in our local weekly newspaper and people just loved it. The newspaper covered six small towns in Iowa, and was read by just about everyone. Mom struck a great balance between writing about family, the world, local issues, politics, religion, and general news. Her column, “From the Round Oak Table” appeared weekly (later bi-weekly) from late 1974 until 2002.
Mom is now suffering mightily with physical and mental health issues, and her column, her legacy, is the last thing on anyone’s minds right now. I’m trying, a little bit at least, to preserve her body of work. My blog… Round Oak Table v2… attempts to follow Mom’s format to a degree, and occasionally I’ll reprint a past article from Mom’s archives.
I think if I could get myself onto a regular schedule (bi-weekly at least!) it could be a really beautiful thing. It’s been so fun to revisit our family history by reading Mom’s old columns. I wish I was being as diligent in writing about my own family.
My biggest problem, my writer’s block, occurs because I don’t want to get too personal on my blog. I remember as a kid being largely mortified at all times by my mom’s column! It has made me hesitant, as a general rule, to commit anything to paper that might later come back and bite me in the tail! So #1, I don’t want to embarrass myself, and #2 I don’t want to embarrass my husband or children.
As far as the Family History thing goes, what about making a weekly spot for family memories? Stories about Uncle Jim, your own childhood, the things you have learned during your genealogy work, etc.
I disagree that blogging for family history reasons vs your regular blog have to be different. In LDS family history culture, a journal is a great find. Not just for the John Smith was born on a snowy night April 1895, but also for really connecting to our predecessors.
A good article on lds.org called “Hidden Benefits of Keeping a Personal History” has a lot of great points with application for blogging. It might be kind of neat for you to show specific examples from your blog with prophetic/spiritual quotes about what a journal or personal history should be and/or include.
A couple other points you could consider would be compiling a blog book with important posts for a personal history or making a blog just for genealogy finds, research methods, or your families information so that others can find it and link their information into it (though I think that last idea is pretty bleh, because there are already effective means for sharing this information).
We’ve started a tradition of making a family photo book from walmart.com every Christmas with our favorite pictures of the year. Since I don’t scrapbook, that’s all the record we really keep so far. Last year I looked through all my blog posts for the year and found stories and funny quotes to put in the book. The kids love to read it, and it was really easy to put together. Of course I’m a “Mommy blogger”, so that’s all I really write about on our blog.
I like the idea of doing a weekly family memory. You could even do a family blog that’s all about history or memories. That could be really fun.
I just thought of something else.
A blog is a different (and cooler) than a journal because it has the potential to offer another perspective via comments. Maybe a post on a historical event, that had comments from people all over the country, and their point of view would give insight into the context of your experience. Or a family event that you tell a story from and then in the comments someone else shares their version of the same event or details you may have forgotten.
“Why is it easier to be either completely plugged-in or totally disconnected?”
I have NO IDEA. But I experience the very same thing and have spent years wondering the same question.
Thanks for the good ideas! I like the idea of a weekly family feature. I’ve been trying to implement some sort of blogging schedule for almost a year now, with no luck (or, more likely, no perseverance or actual effort).
2 points:
I didn’t mean to denigrate mommy blogging in anyway. First, I think it’s incredibly valuable and important to record the special, awful, significant things that happen in our lives, and I find that histories that include accounts of the daily lives of the women and children of cultures are much more interesting than the traditional war crap. And second, I am a mommy blogger. I can’t imagine having a “book blog” or a “recipe blog” even though I love both of those things and read blogs that are that topical. I would like to be a mommy blogger who writes about the mommy stuff SO WELL that people who aren’t innately interested in that kind of thing would be interested anyway. Both to validate the mommy life and also to see that my writing has improved. (Though that may be an inherently flawed (i.e. stupid) ambition.)
And two, I agree with Laura’s comment about not separating the personal and the “regular” blogs. I refuse to write two blogs. At least for now. Unless I change my mind.
Oh, and Kikibibi — I always figure I’m going to be an embarrassment to my kids (at least when they’re teenagers) no matter what I do, so I can’t worry that my writing will bug them.
I started out blogging as a way of keeping a journal and also letting far away family know what was going on with us. But I pretty much never post on that blog now so I guess I’m failing at that. I blog because I like it. And I understand when people are busy and can’t read or write on their blog. Life is still the most important thing. I go through periods too where I’m just not tapped in to the blog thing for a while. Except for you. Yours is the one blog that I have never missed a post since I found you. I wonder what that means?
Oh, by the way, I did print out a book of my first year of posts from my other blog and it’s a great journal. Now if only I could keep up on it….. So that’s my advice for family history.
Sometimes I think people get a little carried away with what blogging should and shouldn’t be. I’m mostly talking about those who give mommy bloggers a rough time….”we don’t want to hear about your silly kids etc”. Well really? then why are you reading my blog? There are plenty of other political, religious, deep-thought type blogs. Those blogs are filled with writers and readers so full of their own self-importance I wouldn’t WANT them to read my blog. My blog is for me as an outlet, journal, updater. Read it or don’t. I’ll still blog.
This isn’t aimed at you at ALL. I don’t consider you one of those people. I’ve just read a few things lately that have ripped on the mommies out there and I guess reading your post set me off a bit. Yeah, blogs aren’t journals, but it isn’t like anyone is forcing these people to type in that URL and go see pictures of cute buns. It’s not like I force anyone into my home to look at my scrapbooks for hours on end (if I actually scrapbooked).
However i DO get what you are saying about wanting to show your ambition, expand your writing. Wanting your blog to be read by thousands of people. Having sponsors calling you up all the time. Changing the world with each new post. I know there are several bloggers out there of whom I’m jealous. I want to stay home with my kid and just type out a few silly things now and then and make thousands a month.
Okay here comes the cheesy part: One of the reasons I like your blog is you actually seem to have more a balance. You talk the mommy thing and other mommies relate to that. You can talk the church thing, churchy people get that. You talk the writing thing, the funny things the driving a mini van things and don’t’ do it in a condescending or too overly preachy, cheesy manner. I can tell your smart and will probably be a famous writer someday, but you are also down to earth and know what is important to you. Just the fact that you are going to speak about family history blogging and you are doing that interview where you actually let an outsider into your house on a Sunday…that shows ambition to me. So there you go….
Julia — THANK YOU.
I use mine somewhat as a journal…it may not get read by a lot of people, but I want to remember many of these things and its easier to keep it this way than to write it and have to save the paper
steff
I consider Matilda’s blog (note that it’s “her” blog, not “mine”) as something that will complement her scrapbooks – and so far, it’s the *only* way I’ve been able to get her Dad to participate in recording her life. I guess the whole scrapbooking thing is mine or girly or crafty or not geeky enough or goodness knows what objections he truly has (might also be being married to a writer/editor type, and worrying about making mistakes!) BUT, he has got his wacky-doo crackberry-esque mobile phone sorted out so that he can take pictures and add ‘em to Matilda’s blog any time.
I still do most of the posts, picking photos, writing my observations on Matilda and our family life, but my beloved does participate in the blog, and I’m so happy he does.
I think blogs can be a digital scrapbook or family history. There’s probably a level of sanitisation, but that also happens with what we choose to scrapbook or journal or discuss in our family memories. For me, nothing will replace my physical scrapbooks or photos, or the look on family’s faces as I subject them to peruse my latest creation,
but for me, Matilda’s blog is absolutely complementary to those efforts – and it’s often easier to hope on the PC and whack up a quick blog post about how cutely she’s saying strawb-ba-berries at the moment than it is to get into my scrapbooks (other people are most caught up than me, but I”m prett behind!).
You know, being a mom IS important work.
There is absolutely *nothing* wrong with being a “mommy blogger” and if your thoughts or funny stories help other moms along the way [or just make them laugh], then you HAVE achieved something, and something good IMO.
Something far more valuable than pseudo-intellectual drivel from people who take themselves way too seriously and have nothing better to do than write “IMPORTANT” Stuff.
Keep on keeping on – your blog rocks.