Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Half-started vs. Whole-Hearted: A Blog Theme Emerges, and I Fight It, Still

I don't want this blog to be a mommy blog. Really, I don't.

Half-started posts linger on my Drafts page. Blogg-ish thoughts lurk, un-inked, in my mind. Thoughts on yoga. On our transition to rural life in the Skagit Valley. On living with my feet in two worlds, urban Capitol Hill and rural Skagit. On excercise. On the TV show Hoarders. Yes, I said it -- lately I'm inspired to write about Hoarders. Ties into my fascination with thrifting and how our culture manages their "stuff." I have many thoughts On Writing. On Not writing. On ego. On clinging -- to a strong body, to a non-wrinkled skin surface, on clinging to ideas about what is and is not okay to write about on a blog.

And yet. Somehow. The blog posts I end up whipping out and clicking "Publish Post" -- end up being musings on my children, on motherhood, on moments in time as a mom.

And dang it, I end up sounding like someone who thinks parenting blogs are less-than. It's not that. It's that I think I'm less than, if I am presenting myself to the world and all I have to talk about is my kids. It's just so dang cliche.

And if you know me in the slightest, you'll know that I hate to be put in a box.

Box or no box, the fact remains -- my heart explodes for my children, my head aches with the growth that's in it for me. Year by year, I know -- the complexities will only magnify. So I'll probably keep writing about what it's like... And so, I just have to go with it.

I like to write about the sweetness of life. I like to write from my insides, the blood-thumping red rimmed pulsing insides of our selves. I can blather on about brilliant thoughts of mine. Insights. Theories. Observations. But little of it feels connected to my heart. So I let those thoughts linger on my Drafts dashboard. Try as I may to impress, to impose a representation of my different selves into this new-fangled way of showing my self to the world, the fact remains. I write from my core and my core right now revolves around tasting life as a mother.