a question of content

have you ever asked yourself WHY you blog? i generally refrain from asking myself too many deep questions, but now and then, one arrives in my brain and i feel the need to look it straight in the face and come up with an answer.

when i first started blogging, i wrote an average of 10 posts a month. then it picked up to maybe 15 a month but then over this past summer, it plummeted down to about 4 per month. i was thinking about that a few days ago and thinking about the content of my writing as well and i realized that not only has the regularity changed, so has the content. (al, i can feel that poop thought forming in your head as i type this)

when i first started writing, i wrote about brooke a lot. about being the mom of an aspie child and the challenges of homeschooling. i wrote a bunch of childhood memories and tried to cram tons of information into each post as if i thought that if i didn't put out enough, no one would come read me.

as brooke has gotten older, i've felt like it was time to taper off on writing about her. sure, i still talk about her, but i don't want to share as many of her challenging or embarrassing moments. she's a whole human all her own & she might not appreciate being laughed at by my blogging buddies. so now i mostly just write about her with her permission. and i only add pics that i know she'd approve if she were looking over my shoulder. like this one of her holding a teeny tiny bunny that was rescued over the summer.

my day to day life isn't particularly interesting most of the time. we only have one car & my husband works full-time, so i spend pretty much every day in this house, living with my in-laws & homeschooling my recalcitrant daughter. that does lead to some amusing or bizarre events, but most of the time, those events aren't things i can write about because i don't ever want to embarrass my family members or make them worry that the things they say or do will end up in my blog. i want them to like me & that's more important than sharing a great story.

so where does that leave my blog? what is the purpose of it? i think that it has evolved into a place where i can remember who i am. most of my time and brain are taken up with being a wife and mom. i love being that person, but it's not all of me. i still existed before i was married or had brooke. i had a personality and opinions. i went places and did things. i had friends and we shared adventures. i don't get to spend as much time as i'd like existing as me, outside of the framework of wife and motherhood, but my blog is kind of my place to remember that i do exist. it's my place to remind myself that even if something horrible happened that took my family from me, i wouldn't just shrivel up and disappear due to a lack of practical application.

wow, this turned kind of dark in that last sentence, but at least i answered my question of why do i blog now. i guess that means that if you stick around, you'll have to keep reading stories of my youthful escapades, my IBS dilemmas and my boobs.