Responding to Melissa's Blog Question July 21

I wanted to respond to Melissa’s question since I have a blog that I haven’t posted to since last October. First I thought I should mention why I do (or did) feel like blogging.

When I was traveling every week to Texas and back, I hoped it might be a way to stay rooted with my real life while my body was physically removed from my family and the routines of life in Indiana slowly started to fade. The nature of the season was temporary, leading ultimately to life back in California, so the whole period was to be an adventure I could write about.

So for the reasons I haven’t blogged for the past nine months, here are a few:

1. Life gets busy. When I was “living” in my apartment in Texas, the idea of writing everyday seemed doable. It was for a while, but my trips became shorter and less frequent, and the whole travel thing was more sporadic and unpredictable, with recovery periods lasting a long time and the guilt of tasks left undone or time spent with family always taking precedence.

2. What to choose to write about? As weeks pass by, I become frustrated that I can’t capture each enjoyable experience before the next one comes along. The kids will say or do something worthy of cherishing forever, and then it’s gone. I’ll read a passage in one of my books or devotions, underlining or asterisking like crazy, and then I turn the page and forget to share it. I’ll watch a movie, or hear a song, or feel like basking in the weather and wanting to somehow describe it to somebody far away, and then I arrive at my destination, and I forget.

3. Privacy. When I was traveling to Texas I was careful not to say where I actually lived, lest I lead some online predator to my fatherless family. Also, I was careful, maybe paranoid, about getting too specific about my kids, their ages, where they went to school, or something, and simply kept everything I wrote safe or vague. I know there’s nothing fun about reading a blog that doesn’t somehow give the reader a glimpse into the author’s private thoughts or insights, but I was guarded, and probably overly so.

4. Anonymity. I really didn’t think anybody was reading, and frankly I don’t think I ever told anybody that I had a blog at all. Apparently Melissa had a link to it, and at least one person was reading the blog which I figured out when I ran into a friend at Bella Vita (oh no, did I just share a specific place?) and he said he’d read the last posting about bottled water. I was totally convinced nobody had ever seen it.

So these are the answers that come to mind, and just writing them causes me to want to have a do-over and give it another chance.