While at the spa today (sigh…), I had the opportunity to read an excellent article that really sums up my feelings about blogging (or what I think my feelings are). It’s in the February 2008 issue of WonderTime and is written by Catherine Newman (who maintains a very entertaining blog on her experiences as a mother on http://www.wondertime.com/).
“Blogging is the underbelly of scrapbooking, its tantruming, scatalogical doppelganger. In the scrapbook version of summer vacation, I would paste together a sunny collage of sea and sand and smiling kids. In the blog version, I might be more inclined to mention the steaming beach Port-A-John, where the final quarter of Birdy’s sandwich ended up tumbling into the reeking blackness. If scrapbooking is the urge to put it all together, blogging might be the urge to take it all apart. Blogging might not make life tidier, but it keeps life in your memory, and keeps it real.”
“Writing helps me pay attention as the years fly by. I’m forever scrawling notes on Target receipts about things the kids say. I think blogging actually makes me a better parent because I feel like I’m being watched, even if the feeling is self-imposed. It’s like the way I’m a better parent when there are guests in the house. Maybe you could describe it as a feeling like there are guests in my psyche.”
“Writing gives me a way to step back from my life and really see it. To connect the dots so I can tell the story the way I feel it, even though, my God, there are a million true ways to tell any story.”
Thanks, Catherine…I couldn’t have said it any better myself. My sentiments exactly.
Off I go to bed…I have a splitting headache which I’ve been nursing all day, not to mention a husband who is limping around like a cripple. With both kids in bed and some peace, I think I need to take advantage of some Tylenol PM and say goodnight.
Until then…
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