a blog... motivated by threats!

so today . . . i got this message on facebook--"i'm going to quit looking at your blog."

ok, it has been a while since i blogged. in fact, my blogging has been kind of hit and miss for the last several months. we've house hunted. we've married off our daughter. we've moved. we've unpacked... mostly. we've gone on vacation. we've had company. i've thought bloggy thoughts, but just couldn't seem to get them written down. as i've said before, i have to be in a certain frame of mind to blog, and i just haven't been there.

here's where i've been. smack the snooze alarm twice and then get up--go to my new, close, neighborhood 7-11 for a diet lemon cokesi on my way to work--spend the day trying to work with 10 pre-k kids, 5 kindergarteners, 2 curriculums, and 1 brain saying, "quit and go home!"--go home and change clothes--walk the dogs--make dinner, eat dinner, clean up after dinner--take a shower--do miscellaneous household stuff--catch up on facebook and email--go to bed.

do you see blogging anywhere in that list? me either. but i'm not ready to give it up. not yet. here's why...

TOP TEN REASONS I'M NOT READY TO STOP BLOGGING

10. it makes me think. my friend wendy says i think too much. sometimes i probably do. i wake up thinking about stuff. i go to sleep thinking about stuff. my brain never rests. this can be a problem, but blogging makes me think in funny ways. one of my favorite things to do is take an ordinary situation and make it funny. but that takes brain power, because i can't lie--everything i write has to be true... or at least as true as my memory is acurate :-) lately my brain has been sadly underpowered. i think i need an auxiliary brain...

9. i've invested too much to quit. i've written 684 blog posts! that is a lot of hours of thinking and writing and editing. it is too much to just write it off as something i did for a while and walk away. i want to reach 1000! maybe 2000! maybe 10,000!!

8. it helps me remember my life. i am shocked at how much i forget. sometimes i go back and read my old blogs and can't believe how many things would be lost forever if i hadn't blogged.

7. it reminds me of my friends and family who don't see me every day but read my blog. i think about you when i am writing, and i think about what i think you will think about what i am writing, and i think about if i should i write what i am writing because of what you might think about it...

(...maybe wendy is right...)

6. it makes me think (there i go again,) positively--mostly. i have come to realize that i am not really the optimist i like to think that i am. even though i want to be tigger, i am really a lot more eeyore. but who wants to read a whiny blog every day? who wants to write a whiny blog every day?? so while once in a while eeyore shoves tigger out of the way and gets to write a whiny blog, i try to get tigger to do most of them.

5. it makes me feel like a writer. i never knew i might want to be a writer until i started blogging. and then i started seeing ebooks that were really just a compilation of someone's blogs. i'll probably never write a real book, but now that ebooks are an option, who knows... considering some of the stuff that is out there in ebookland, maybe i will! my ebook might not be the best one, but it would certainly not be the worst one either!

4. it worries some people when i don't blog--namely, my mother-in-law :-) when i don't blog, she thinks something is wrong, and she worries about me. and she isn't completely wrong... there usually is a reason when i don't blog, and it isn't always a lack of time. but it also isn't usually as bad as she might think it is. some days are just ordinary and offer me no blogworthy material.

3. it keeps me from quitting my day job. this seems counter-intuitive to me, but it is true. it seems as though if i didn't work, then i would have more time to do all the other stuff i do--like blogging. but, i think to myself, what if i stopped working and then didn't have anything to blog about? what if i stopped working and never left the house? what if i stopped working and my blogs were reduced to "so today . . . i watched shopping tv and ate a tuna fish sandwich. of course, i only ate a tuna fish sandwich, because i burned the toasted cheese. it's nearly impossible to burn a tuna fish sandwich..." hmmm. ok, maybe that would work... maybe i should think about quitting my day job, because that sort of sounded like the beginning of a pretty good blog...

2. it lets people see who i wish i was. actually, my blog is who i am on good days... on those days when everything is right side up and all sunshiny. all of my days are not like that. i wish they were, but they are not. but writing the blog helps me be that person i want to be. it helps me find the humor in sometimes not so funny situations. it forces my brain to live in the land of unicorns and rainbows instead of gloom and doom--(ok, maybe not unicorns and rainbows. that is a little too sweet for me. maybe puppies and daisies...) it is a risk-free way to share myself with whoever wants to spend five minutes on my blog. it's who i wish i was, all the time, every day. even when i'm not...

and the #1 reason i don't want to stop blogging?

1. because my dad is threatening to quit looking at my blog!

yes, that facebook comment came from my dad. my dad! my dad, who can barely type, left me that message. i love my dad. and for him to take 20 minutes to type those few words (ok, i might be exaggerating that just a little bit,) made me realize that i needed to get back to it! i needed to stop putting it off, put pen to paper (so to speak,) and blog something.

so here it is, dad. a blog. not my best one, but at least when you click on that icon we put on your computer desktop that takes you directly to my blog (did you all know you could do that?!?!) there will be something new to read. at least for today.

i'm not making any promises about tomorrow...