Why I Blog:

When I first started my blog in 2009, I thought it might be a creative outlet for me.  I had just been given my first digital camera from Chris, and I didn’t seem to be printing photos anymore for the old keep-sake photo albums. I was also just getting into gardening and we had the looming project of developing our property in front of us.  

Now over the course of my life I’ve embraced a number of different hobbies, most of which fell by the wayside for one reason or another, so I thought I would create a blog as a hobby.  I knew nothing about blogging, but it is the first personal hobby that has brought me as much satisfaction as gardening. In almost too many ways to count, it has changed me and the way I look at my life.  In fact, so much so, it has become a hobby I regularly recommend to others. 

I started blogging as a personal tool to journal the experiences I was having as a gardener and pond creator, but somewhere along the line, it became less about me capturing a moment or telling a little story, and more about the moment changing how I view life.    You see, the process of writing includes putting thoughts on paper so to speak, and the blogging process encourages you to stop and think deeper.

Once you start writing about your life and what shapes it, you begin thinking more about who you are, who you are becoming, and whether you like what you see or not.  I find myself to be boring, quite frankly, but it’s not possible to write about every event, every thought, and every happening in your life.  Instead, you have to go through a process of choosing to capture the most meaningful or significant events and the most important thoughts of the day or the week, or the month.  Often I am reminded that sometimes the most meaningful things appear in the most mundane— like my post about finding pleasure in “fog”;  or  my `bee buzz`; or  being eye level with eagles!

When you blog, you can open the doors of your journey and allow others to join you if you want.  My blog is not public; my privacy settings limit viewing to those I have given the link to, or  to those who have signed up to follow by email.    My blog is for me really, and I share (with those who are interested), my successes and failures, my good moments and the not so great ones.

My blog is a digital record of my life that is electronically saved.  It can never be lost, or destroyed in a fire.  But the most important thing for me,`and one of the main reasons I continue to blog,  is that each year, on January 1^st,  I turn my bloggings into a soft-cover book comprising all my posts from the previous year, and these books become my year in review – my annual photo album.  My life.!

I believe it is when you share your life, that you feel connections forming.  So as I start another year, I will try to ponder more effectively, the meaningful in the mundane and in the not so mundane.