Ok, so I’m jumping on the bandwagon a bit late, but the lovely ladies of Sluiter Nation and Not Super, Just Mom, Katie and Miranda, are hosting a week of blogging festivities.
Yesterday’s task: a top ten list of reasons we love to blog. Rules and I do not always get along, and I lack David Letterman’s flair for top ten lists. So I’m ditching the top ten part and just telling you why I love to blog.
This is something people ask me frequently. “Why do you blog? You don’t get paid, right?”
Sadly, no.
“And you’ve got plenty of stuff to do with the twins, right?”
Oh, yes. Plenty. Do you know how many stickers two four year olds can spread throughout one house in two days? Approximately 1200, and that’s not counting the–
“So why do you do something that’s so time consuming when you don’t even get paid?”
Well. That’s a doozy.
I blog because I am a writer. Always have been. I kept journals from late elementary school on. For me, there was no sight more full of hope, of promise, than a fresh journal page, a quiet cup of coffee, and time to contemplate. At the front of my endless stream of journals, which also served as idea central for my creative writing classes and spare brain-space when mine seemed full, I always wrote the same lines, from Philip Sidney: “‘Fool,’ said my muse to me. ‘Look in thy heart and write.’”
Why am I a writer? I simply have to be. There are things that must come out onto the page. Over the years I’ve found outlets in journalism, creative writing, and journaling, but nothing has quenched the writer in me nearly so well as blogging. Blogging is a combination of all three of the above, and that’s a huge part of why I love it so much. You are part reporter, part creative writer, part diarist.
I love blogging because I love words. I adore the moments of inspiration when the right combination of words form a perfect sentence; re-reading that sentence, feeling the ebb and flow of the words as they caress an idea into being, I adore falling in love with words and their infinite combinations all over again each time I sit down to write.
Anyone who comes out of undergrad with a degree in English and Creative Writing, as I did, can tell you that there are few career paths in which your skill set and grammar skills will be truly appreciated. Like many others, I went to law school, where I met an entirely new type of writing. Legal writing contracts (seriously, no pun intended), aiming to squeeze ideas into neat and orderly packages, whether or not those ideas were intended to be so constrained. I was used to writing to expand; writing to explode one tiny bit of dialogue or poetry into a firestorm of interpretative word dance. The idea that paragraphs should all be constructed identically and according to a set model made me want to rip my hair out.
Aside from the writing, I blog so that my children will know me. When they’re old enough to need the things I know right now, I will, in all likelihood, have forgotten them entirely, or glossed over the nitty-gritty to fill my memory with soft-focus memories of their childhood that won’t do justice to any part of the experience. I want them to know me, not as Mommy, but as a person, and I want them to see how desperately they were loved, and what that kind of love looks like. I blog as a love letter to my children.
And as a scrapbook.
My children have no baby books, and let’s face it, at this point, I’m not likely to create any. During their infancy, we were too busy dealing with dual reflux and the havoc of twins combined with postpartum depression to worry about preserving everything. Yet, buried somewhere in my daughter’s closet, there are a few zip-lock bags containing doll-sized preemie onesies, preemie diapers, and their birthday footprints. Their impossibly tiny hospital bracelets are nestled in my jewelry box. To me, they are precious.
But scrapbooks? Pictures? Professional photography sessions that render the subjects stiff and posed? No. These things, my children will not have. I am dangerous with a glue stick, and far more expressive with words than my horribly out-of-date point and shoot camera. I will save their pictures in digital form, but they will not leave this house for their married abodes lugging along boxes heavy with bric-a-brac framed photos of birthday parties long gone.
Instead, they will have all this.
And that is why I love to blog.
My twins don't have baby books either. And my youngest has even less. But I do have keepsake boxes with their tiniest onesies, hospital bracelets, blood pressure cuffs and eye masks from the NICU. I'll always treasure those.
“Why am I a writer? I simply have to be.”
Yes.
And baby books? What are those again? I don't even have twins and I can relate.
My mom told me it was a shame that my kids only had the blog and not a keepsake baby book like I had. I replied, “You mean the baby book that was filled out in it's entirety by my 12 year old sister?” Shockingly, that did not shut her up. Oh well.
You have said it so well. Yes. This is why we blog. To keep a piece of us, as writers. Blogging is more than just typing a page that no one will read. We have an audience, an interaction, and a record of ourselves…of our voices…as we get through this thing called parenting. This thing called life.
Yes & yes. Better than a baby book IMO, something better wrinkled pages with no story attached to the picture of who-is-that-again.
Angie, Thanks for tweeting me your blog link. I very much enjoyed my visit. I loved this entry. My favorite part was this: “I love blogging because I love words. I adore the moments of inspiration when the right combination of words form a perfect sentence;” That is what I love about blogging as well.
Gonna grab your button and run with it to my blog now. I shall return!
Pam
MyKidsSccrMom
I love the phrase “dangerous with a glue stick.”
@KLZ, maybe it should be my tagline. I may add it to my twitter bio….
@Pam, hi! Great to have you over here. Glad you liked the bit about words. It's hard to express the idea, but it's all part of it.
@Jackie, yes, validation! We need to form an anti-scrapbooking union.
@Katie, beautifully said.
@Elizabeth, “only had the blog”? Wow. Hellauva lot more work than a baby book, far more illustrative, and infinitely more capable of telling your little ones how their mommy longed for both of them and what she went through to be able to hold her precious babies. I think it's the best gift you could give them.
@Ericka, somehow I knew you'd like that sentiment.
@TwinSpin, so glad I'm not the only one. I wonder if any mothers of multiples actually did baby books? Love the idea of those keepsake boxes. Maybe I should upgrade from Ziplock bags!
Bravo! I blog because I MUST. And I didn't know that I MUST until I started blogging.
What you said…