blogging – kellieann

In case you didn’t know, I haven’t blogged since November. I thought you might like to know why. So, here are my reasons…

1. I don’t have time for this nonsense.

I really don’t. I really, really don’t. I have tried to make time and failed. I have tried to steal time and failed. I have tried to invent time and failed. I’m going to give you many more reasons why I haven’t been blogging, but basically they are all going to come back to this one in some way.

2. I am distracted.

I live in a house with an active, noisy family. I home school my boys. So, that means I am basically never alone. I also never…and I mean never…have a time when I don’t have anything else to do. Oh, I may pretend. I may sit in my comfy chair and think I’m just going to read a chapter of this novel because I have nothing else to do, but it’s an ugly lie. At any given moment there are dishes to wash, or a floor to sweep, or a meal to prepare, or a bill to mail, or a text to answer, or a dog to feed, or stubborn red dirt to scrub out of the knees of baseball pants, or papers to grade, or…you get the picture. I have a hard time putting all that stuff on the sideboard of my life in order to sit here and peck away at the keyboard…as much as I’d like to.

3. I’m technically stupid.

Technologically. About technology. I’m stupid when it comes to technology. About ten years ago, when I first started blogging, I eventually had most of what I needed to know to run my blog figured out. Then I took that five year hiatus, and now I’m stupid. And guess what? I have no time (see #1) to try to figure things out. Everything is harder and newer, and I don’t know what a byte is or a plugin or periscope…, and yeah…I’m stupid, and I’m probably just going to stay that way and blog through my stupidity or give up trying.

4. I don’t know what I want to blog about.

I mean I do. I think I want to blog about too much. I want to blog about homeschooling, and family, and crafts, and home decor, and books, and faith, and… See? It’s overwhelming. I’ve never figured out if it is ok to blog about all of those things, or if I should just focus on one of those things, or if I should have like seven different blogs to blog separately about those things, or if I should just stop blogging and go feed my dog.

5. I feel ~~a little~~ ~~a lot~~ irrelevant.

I learned long ago that if you are blogging for others…the praise of others, the notice of others, the assurance of others…then you are going to be disappointed. Blogging…or any kind of writing for that matter…, at least at the very heart of the issue, has to be for yourself first. It may grow to fit around some kind of audience, but it has to grow from your heart, or it will lack authenticity. But yet, I still struggle with balancing that. If you’re blogging, you want someone to read it, but if it feels like no one is, then you start to question what in the world you’re doing…especially if your floor needs swept. Maybe you know people are reading, but no one is saying anything about it. No comments. No feedback. Again, you start to question what and why you’re doing it. Is it an outlet? Is it a job? Is it a hobby? Is it a duty? And then, you don’t know the answer, so you shut your laptop and go unload your dishwasher.

So, in a nutshell (key word: nut), that is why I haven’t been blogging. Does this post mean that I’m going to start blogging regularly? I don’t know. I’d like to. Honestly, I think about blogging a lot. I have a lot of ideas, but then… #1…and #4…and of course, #3.

I’m in a really busy season of my life. The daughter is getting married in June, and sometimes I like to pretend that things are going to go smoothly and that I’m not busy with the details of that. I also like to pretend that I’m still 22 years old and weigh 110 pounds. Neither fantasy is going really well. High school baseball season is starting in a week. We only have 427 games in a two month period. Not really, but every time I look at that schedule the page starts to blur, and I feel dizzy, and I think I smell Cracker Jacks. And then, of course, there’s everything else (see #1 and #2).

So, that’s that. Here’s a picture of me making a duck face and throwing a gang sign, because I’m awkward like that. And now, I have to go make a bed…or something.

Blogging. I’ve done this before. I think about three or four times. I had a homeschooling blog. I had a book blog. And then my favorite was one called Pirate Mom Dot Com (I don’t actually type out the link because I don’t own the domain any longer, so I can’t vouch for any content that might be there now).

I stopped blogging at Pirate Mom rather abruptly. I just blogged one day, and then I never did again. I’ve regretted that from time to time. I actually had a fair amount of readers that spanned beyond just my family and in-real-life friends. I usually posted about 2-3 times a week. So, it’s fair to say that some of my readers may have feared for my well-being. I was sorry about that. It’s an uncomfortable feeling to be thought of as dead, especially if you aren’t.

Even though it seemed like my blogging exit was sudden, I had been thinking about it for awhile. You see, I was at an interesting place in my life. I had just had my third child, and while I know other women have babies and go right on over-achieving and wonder-womaning, all the while sporting the latest fashions and perfect lip gloss, that wasn’t me. I was directionless. And busy. And wearing yoga pants. And hormonal. And the baby had eaten my lip gloss.

I had also sort of lost my focus concerning my blog. I didn’t know what direction I wanted to go. I was starting to get some offers to review products and advertise on my blog for income. I was interested in that. I think. But I didn’t really know what I was doing. One company sent me some kind of potty training contraption that fit around the base of the toilet like half of a doughnut. It was so a child could rest his feet there and not feel like he was going to fall into the commode. This thing was about three feet wide, and my baby was six months old…a good three years away from using it. I felt a little panicky that I had this big plastic thing already, but I couldn’t review it for the company that sent it for at least thirty-six months. So, despite this weird and random example, I just didn’t know where I stood on the whole money-making/review-writing angle of blogging then.

I didn’t blog for a week. Then I waited three weeks. Then three weeks turned into four months. The next thing I know I hadn’t posted anything in a year. Then I started getting emails that I needed to renew the domain. I didn’t. I couldn’t. I was too wrapped up in homeschooling my teenager and ten year-old and laundry and cooking and fishing lip gloss out of the baby’s mouth.

But here I am. Again. Over five years later.

I am wanting this to be a place of encouragement and light-heartedness and fun. The blogs that I use my precious time to read are ones that make me feel good, that make me feel encouraged and inspired, that make me want to turn my computer off and *do* something. I want to write like that. I want to write about the things that I’m comfortable with, things that I love, and things that I want to know more about. I want to write with passion and humor and knowledge and candor.

I hope that if you’ve endured this far, that you will come back. I have a lot of ideas stirring about. I have a lot that I want to accomplish and try here. And I hope that you’ll join me…again. I’m 99% that I’m not having any more babies, and the baby that sabotaged the last blog is six and half years-old now, so I think I’ll stick around a bit longer this time.

Tag: blogging

an unneeded, pitiful explanation as to why i haven’t been blogging

my bloggin’ history…and future