Happy birthday blog! That’s right, this week, the blog celebrates it’s birthday. If you know anything about websites, you know that a birthday means that they annual hosting and domain registration fees were due. as it came time to hand over my credit card, I had some second thoughts.
I don’t have a ton of time in my life and I know the fall will bring it’s own set of new challenges. I was having trouble deciding if I should commit to another year of a blog. With it, I feel a sense of responsibility. I need to post regularly, I need to write engaging things. I need to. I need to. I need to.
Last week Tuesday, I got sick. I had a busy weekend and hadn’t pre-written anything. I’m actually not a blogger with posts in the can. I WISH I had that kind of time. So Tuesday night, when I intended to do some writing, I was too sick. Wednesday night, I had a meeting at my church. By Thursday, I was behind on housework and my mother-in-law was coming over that night to watch our kids the next day. That led to Friday and family time in the evening, so no posts were written. Readers lost. Hits down.
What was I doing? I didn’t know whether or not I should continue having that feeling of “you need to write” hanging over my head. I could always guest post for friends. I could always use Flickr to pin stuff I do on Pinterest. I could always write in a paper journal just for myself. Did I really wanted to continue to pay for my little sliver of cyber space? Did I want to move back to a WordPress-hosted blog?
The questions continued to mount.
Then, I looked at my hits.
*Sad trombone.*
Why weren’t they as good this month as they were in March? Why wasn’t I spending more time getting the word out to people that I was writing and that I liked feedback. Why, why, why?
Hmmm, see above where I talk about lack of time.
So after this internal debate flushed through my body for several weeks, I read my first ever post on this blog. I won’t quote the entire thing here, you are able to go read it, but I will write this paragraph.
So here I was, listening to him talk about blogs on a day when I was feeling really agitated. There weren’t words, but there was a feeling deep down that I needed to write, but about what? My inability to describe how I felt? The fact that I have a degree in journalism, but couldn’t put words on something? I have not one topic that I felt I needed to share, just a desire to write.
I started this as just a place for me to write. Whether people read it or not, I know that this is my place to go and share and write and feel like someone might stumble across it and find some good in it. It isn’t about hits. It isn’t about being able to post five days a week. It isn’t about using the blog as a money-maker. I’m not a full-time blogger.
I’m just a mom and wife who needs a place to call her own. My own little clubhouse. And it’s okay if I play in it alone. But it’s also really cool when other people join me.