I let my blog anniversary come and go without a thought, without a mention. It doesn't seem like I've been doing this for two years. My, my, where does time go? And why does it go so much faster the older you get? Why was it so easy for me to post, practically every day back then and now I do good to write a few words once a week? I enjoyed finding material in everyday things, taking a picture of a cake I made or raindrops on ferns. I don't seem to look at things with the same eyes I did then. I miss that. I think that looking at life through those eyes made even the mundane seem important somehow. Now it takes something a little more significant to make me want to take time to document its happening. Somewhere along the way the reason for posting shifted and I never even noticed. I began to filter more, to worry about offending or boring, when the initial desire to start this public diary was to document my everyday. My everyday, not the everyday I thought folks might be interested in. It was my way of saying here I am, this is me, this is what I'm about and what I do with my time. It's what I find interesting and important or what is bugging me. It's what frustrates, frightens, enlightens or delights me. It's my world and what happens in it. That's what I wanted this blog to be and somewhere along the line, just like so many things in life, it got off course, slightly changed direction without me even noticing. With the awareness that there were more than a hand full of people reading my words, I became more careful with the words I put out there. Instead of words or images that mean something to me, I more often reserve this space for words or images that may interest those who read. When I think of it that way, it really makes me a little sad. I don't want this blog to be like reality TV. Like one of those shows that has a camera in the house 24/7 but condenses it into 30 minutes to an hour and calls it the real life of so and so. When in actuality it's the life they've pieced together and edited to provide entertainment. It's not a true documentation of the lives of those on display. When I started this blog, I saw it as a diary of sorts. I know I've mentioned here before the health issues I have that make me hyper-aware of my own mortality. When you are approaching (and now passed) the age at which your parent died, I think it creates a greater awareness of how short our time in this world is. I have very little tangible evidence of my mothers existence on this earth, most of it is in my memory. I don't want that to be the case for my children or grandchildren. I want them to know who I was and what I was about, from my own perspective, not just from some faded photographs. That's why I started this blog, to put into words and images what my life is about, what I spend my days doing, what makes me laugh and what makes me cry. I believe I still do that to some degree, only these days it seems to be the Readers Digest condensed version. I'm not going to make any New Years proclamations about how I'm going to post every day or anything. I know that would last about three days, but I do want to take some of the filters off, worry less about the interestingness of the material. Hey, in reality I'm not always that interesting, and this is supposed to be my reality, right? If it proves to be boring to some, that's the beauty of choice, they can choose not to read. One day I will print these words, and to the few who will hold it in their hands, it will not matter how many read it online.
Wow, that's not at all the post I sat down here to write. I'm not sure where it came from. I think looking back at those early posts evoked the same feelings I get from seeing an old photograph of myself. That who is that person response. It's hard to believe I looked so young. For me it's hard to believe how new and fresh and excited I felt back then about blogging. Though I have very little control over the effects of time on my appearance, I can control the effect it has on my writing. All it takes is a little change in perspective.
The photo above is a little baby Mary-Jane that I crocheted. It says a lot about what a difference two years can make. I can say with great confidence that when I wrote that very first post, I had no idea in a couple of years I'd know how to crochet or sweet cracker sandwich, that I'd be crocheting a baby-bootie for my first grandchild.
There's nothing like the flipping of a calendar page to throw you into a tailspin of introspective naval gazing, huh?
