Getting there

Getting there

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Happy Blogiversary!


This morning I woke up and realized that as of yesterday I've been writing this blog for one month. That seemed worthy of mention, if not celebration, as it took me a long time to decide to write a blog at all. I'd considered it many times but always rejected the idea as I couldn't imagine why anyone would care. If it wasn't for the encouragement of my friend Jo it would never have happened, either.

To be honest I began writing this blog as pure catharsis. When I arrived home from holiday in January I was happy to be home but found myself not homesick but heartsick for another country (and if I have to tell you which one then obviously you haven't been reading my blog). I had stories that I was burning to tell but my immediate family already knew them and everyone else was growing weary of hearing them. I figured if I wrote them down I could get them out of my system and even if no one read them it was okay as at least I'd gotten them into words.  I've been incredibly grateful that there are people who have enjoyed them. I've been fortunate to have the support of my husband and daughter, and the advice of some very good friends. I'm grateful to those who have added me to their own blogrolls or asked if they could put my blog link on their own Facebook pages or websites - it meant so much that they thought that what I wrote was worthy of sharing with others. I am so grateful for all the comments, emails, and messages on Facebook that some have sent telling me that I made them laugh or cry or smile. You have no idea what that means to me, so I'm telling you - it means so much to me! I'm thankful to those who gave me permission to write about them without knowing what I would say, and to those I wrote about without permission but hoped that they wouldn't mind.

It's funny that some of my favourite blog entries start out not as an idea in my head but rather a small kernel of feeling deep in my chest. That feeling grows and grows until it must burst out and spill all over this blog (and if you are envisioning a scene similar to "Alien" it is a bit like that, just less gory, thank goodness). Those are the entries that it seems aren't written with my head but my heart, and it seems those are the ones that find the most readers, too, which is incredibly satisfying to me. I've had some friends tell me that they could never blog as they are too private and I thought "Hey! I'm private too!", although I've come to recognize that perhaps I am either not as private as I thought or I have a different definition of privacy. All I know is that I don't feel I have given away pieces of myself with this blog. I feel that it has added to my life, not detracted from it.

So, on I will blog. There will be more about my travels, of course, and a friend has suggested I pay some attention to my own country so that's another direction to explore. March is a difficult month for me in a personal sense and thus I know there are some stories coming that have been brewing inside me for years and are finally ready to be written. For all those who have joined me this far I want to say thank you - and I do hope you stick around for the rest of this ride, however long it lasts. Just keep your arms and legs inside at all times, eh? I really have no idea where this is going, and at times it could be a wild one.

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