Why I Blog

I started blogging in October of 2011.  A few of you have been with me for the whole wild ride, and thank you so much!!!  One question I get asked a lot is why do you blog?

I’m sure my family would like the answer to that question some days, as well, since between blogging and my “regular” job I am working well over 40 hours a week (heck, I even blog at work sometimes, but shhhhh, don’t tell my boss).

Well, to give you my motivation, I first need to remind you where I was at in October 2011.  Art and I were in the process of losing our house, our water heater and dishwasher had gone out in a 48 hour period, and Art had been unemployed for 2 1/2 years.  In addition we were dealing with one child with anxiety disorder and chronic insomnia and the myriad of medication changes that entailed (not to mention “alternative” treatment which I may or may not ever disclose here) and the other child in therapy with a gender specialist.

I had only told a handful of people about our situation, because honestly, who would believe me?

Working out was a great stress reliever, and I’m good at my job and get along well with my coworkers, but I had lost my ability to dream of the future.  It all looked pretty bleak.  Somehow that I can’t remember anymore, I found out about the book The Path: Creating Your Mission Statement for Work and for Life by Laurie Beth Jones.  Part of the book involves dreaming of your perfect day, your perfect weekend, where you want to be in five years, etc.  As I wrote the story of my “perfect” life, I realized that much of it was within my reach if I started working towards that goal.  In my perfect life I was a writer, but I hadn’t written anymore than a Facebook status update in years.

So I committed to writing one blog post a week.  At first, they were just commentaries on the Bible Studies I was participating in.  Then I got confident enough to talk about Bud’s run-ins with bullies and that really struck a chord with my little audience.  People started commenting on what I wrote and it was exciting!!  I had subscribers!!!  Sometimes people come up to me at the grocery store and comment on my blog!!

In January of 2012 I went “professional” and committed to blogging two days a week.  By June it was three days.  Now I blog at least three but some weeks up to five, depending on what’s going on.  I’m still committed to blogging about my family and our life.  I believe one of the things you appreciate is my honesty about our situations.  But I can’t blog about the family 3-5 days a week.  First, they would kill me and second, even though our life is unusual, it’s not that exciting all the time.  Seriously, it’s not.

For those who wonder why I blog recipes, it’s because I love to cook. Why book reviews?  I love to read.  Why product reviews?  Something has to pay for me to be able to continue this little project; to “keep the lights on”, so to speak.  However, I promise you that I will always be honest, because that’s what you expect.

So, you see, the answer to why do you blog is not that simple.  But the main answer is that I blog for me.  I love my readers, but even if I had none, I would still blog at least one day a week.  Just so my head doesn’t explode.

Thank you to Lorelle on WordPress for the idea for this blog.