Rachel-who-ought-to-blog asked me what I enjoy about blogging, a question I am eager to answer. The biggest thing I love about blogging is the record it creates. I am the memory-keeper at my house, and blogging is a way to capture the evanescent. The stories my kids tell about their younger selves are generally stories I have blogged. The things we laugh about together are most often things I have written down here-- not because they are the most intrinsically memorable, but because there's a record of them and the record itself makes us remember them. This year I have been thinking often about seeing as a form of love (which is a topic for another post), and I want my kids to know how much I have loved watching them grow. "I see you," my blog says to them, "and I love seeing you."
On a related but shallower note, I find it so useful to be able to look things up in my archives. Where was that awesome cabbage recipe? When did we last have the masonry guys out to work on the brick? How long ago did I spot my first gray hairs? There are other ways to get that information-- I can google the cabbage and dig through the file cabinet for masonry info. And there's not really an actual need to date the emergence of gray hair. But this blog is a one-stop repository for Things On My Mind: books read, thoughts thunk, goals established, projects completed, and, I suppose, vanity eroded.
Another thing I love about blogging is the way that it offers gentle accountability. No one here was holding my feet to the fire on the Crazy Shakespeare Project, and yet I doubt I would have completed it if I hadn't blogged about it. The blog is a place for me to announce new plans and problem-solve when they're not working (like last summer's half-marathon posts -- that really felt onerous at the time) and tell you when I'm over the hurdles. You guys would never have said "It's December 31, Jamie; how come you haven't finished Twelfth Night yet??" Instead you were happy for me when I finished on January the 7th.
I love the community aspect of blogging. It's different these days. Lilian and I often lament the loneliness of 2016 blogging, when almost all of our former blogging pals have thrown in the towel. I am totally a 2004 kind of blogger, with my dated blog design and my 1200-word text-only posts and the blurry pictures that adorn every fifth post. And yet some of you have been reading me for more than twelve years now -- laughing at my jokes and easing my angst and inviting me into your lives as well. Thank you, all of you! It's been so good to hear your perspectives!
The thing that is alluring to me about blogging in particular, as opposed to Instagram or Snapchat or whatever, is that I love to write. I love the process of thinking up an analogy that says exactly what I mean for it to say (like the mantle paragraph in this post) or a ridiculous pun (desuetude!) or an implausible acronym (VACUOUS). There's a Flannery O'Connor quote from The Habit of Being, in which she says "I certainly am glad you like the stories because now I feel it's not bad that I like them so much. The truth is I like them better than anybody and I read them over and over and laugh and laugh, then get embarrassed when I remember I was the one wrote them." It is a little embarrassing to admit how much I love to troll through my archives. That's the heart of why I blog: it brings me joy in the moment, and joy in the recollection. Thanks for reading, everybody!
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