2 months ago I began to explore the idea of starting a blog. I purchased a chromebook just for this purpose and discovered a platform that seems to make it easy enough for even me to work through the technological tasks necessary to get started. I made up my mind to sit down and started blogging for several reasons. One, sometimes my mind fills with thoughts that beg my psyche to be put into writing. I used to write out in journals when I was younger, then I had kids, and the dust began to pile up on the journals. My thoughts began to get put aside a bit out of necessity to put my kids, family, and career first. (I”ll revisit this in just a moment). Secondly, my desire to put some of this life I live into writing sometimes finds its way into a Facebook post, only to end up longer and wordier than Facebook is probably meant to be. Sometimes this has been cathartic but in the past year, I’ve learned that is not the best platform for my thoughts. (The reasons why could be a separate post and maybe someday will be…) Yet a record of my writing is something I’d like to someday look back on when my kids are grown, when my hair is gray, and my memory is less than it even is now. A record of my writing is something I’d like to be able to share with my children and my grandchildren, a record to allow them to know me more deeply. So this blog will give me space to get my words out, will give a record for my loved ones, and thirdly will be an opportunity to learn. This blog is an opportunity to learn about myself and maybe even a reader out there will take something away as well. Learning about myself sometimes happens in the most unexpected of places and on the most unexpected of days. I’m 42 years old and just yesterday saw the movie “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” with my kids. Of course I bought the ticket and made the time because had grown up watching Mr. Rogers Neighborhood on tv. Yet watching the movie so poignantly brought back childhood memories and connections to such memories that my eyes were opened to the fact that this television hero who I haven’t thought about for quite a while actually is woven into the very fabric of my heart, my soul, my personality, my choices, and my career. This realization sparked a fire inside me to commit to a habit of blog-writing consistently, beginning this year in 2020. The why of the choice of the word “hero” , a connection of Mr. Rogers to a personal connection of mine, and thoughts about habits (my simultaneous loathing of yet need for them) will be a separate post, a day soon, when my heart and mind are ready to go there. That’s how this blog will be — prompted by my emotions in some ways, which sometimes muse and wander to a place where they sit and are “stuck” until I write them out. For this reason, I won’t write to please a particular audience, nor to sound professional or literary, nor to be politically correct or funny, nor to share knowledge or right or wrong on any particular topic. The blog will be personal in the details (for an attempt at privacy), while stilling being a place for me to grow, for my family to enjoy (I do believe some friends are just like family, so yes it’s for them too), and maybe for you reader (if you’ve stayed with me this far) there might be something you find of value that you can take away, too.
a place to write when my thoughts get too loud