The Blog Book

Lately I've been asking myself why I like to blog? My goal is to be able to blog everyday, but somehow 4 children and homeschooling and a house to run just doesn't figure into my blogging ideals. And sometimes I really don't have anything worthy to say. I pretty much live a boring life just now. Interesting and valuable to me, but filled up with the little insignificant dramas of motherhood, survival and homeschooling and a small community, where the only interesting thing that happens in a day is wondering why the hens have given only 4 eggs, instead of their usual 6.

So I've been thinking about why I blog.
I'm one of those people that like to write. I always have. Since I learned how to read and form letters I have strung stories together. I remember getting really, really mad at my Dad once when I was 8 years old, because as we were leaving our summer holiday at Kaiteriteri to drive back to Blenheim, (three and a half hour drive in those days), he packed my blank notebook and pen in the boot of the car. It's funny the things you remember from childhood.

Writing is my outlet for my quiet personality (although I was gratified recently to have my neighbour shake his head in disbelief when I claimed this), and my inability to voice strong opinions face to face. I may or may not have the talent it takes to be a great writer, and even though I only have one little children's book under my belt, and a few articles here and there, it is a compulsion I cannot help. I was born with the desire to express myself in the written word, and it's not going to go away anytime soon. But I am the type of writer who needs quiet and solitude and the ability to put myself into what I am writing to get anything worthwhile out of it, and in a busy household of four children who are at home most of time, this is near impossible.

The other reason I blog is to keep a journal of this season of our lives as our children are growing up. I recently discovered the value of this when my cousin's wife told me about www.blurb.com. I am pretty hopeless at scrapbooking, and keeping photo albums up to date. When I reached my 100th post recently and remembered that I started this blog around the beginning of the year, I realized how my blog has pretty much taken over this role of albums and scrapbooking for me in a way that is not a chore or very timeconsuming, and how awesome it would be to somehow compile it all into a book as a record of 2010. Then my cousin told me about blurb and showed me a fantastic book that she had made for her son's 21st birthday - a photographic and text record of his childhood in a beautifully bound hardback book. So I talked it over with Robin and we decided it would be worth the money (and it's surprisingly inexpensive) to invest in something like this on an annual basis.

So I downloaded blurb and got started, and even though it slurps your blog automatically into a book, you still need to delete, arrange, edit and change the pages around, and it is strangely addictive. Yesterday I burned a whole batch of shortbread because I got engrossed in my blog book!

There is a third reason I blog, and that is because it keeps me connected with the outside world. On days where I am the only adult I see until my husband comes home it's nice to skip around my blogroll and meet up with my 'internet friends'. It's a strange kind of fellowship, but it's important to me, and I love the diversity of my blogroll and the people I have 'met' and become friends with. We encourage each other, support each other, have virtual laughs with each other and sympathise and bond with each other. It's not the world of Anne of Green Gables or the world my parents grew up in, but it's a new and exciting world with a flavour all of its own, and I love it, and I think the minutes I spend on my computer and my blog are worth every second.