The Joy of Writing

I've said this before, but I'll say it again: I love blogging!  For so many years, I was a frustrated writer--but I was also a busy mom who was raising five sons and didn't feel like she had enough hours in the day to devote to anything so time-consuming.  At one point, on March 8, 2001 (when my oldest son was eighteen and my youngest was eight), I began writing an almost-daily "journal" on the computer, in order to get my memories of earlier times with my boys down on paper before I got too old to remember them.  Blogging didn't exist back then (heck, I was amazed enough that I could write a journal on the computer in the first place, on this wondrous and magical invention called Microsoft Word, and fix all of my typos without the aid of White-Out!); but in a sense, I was blogging.   For myself.

Here is how I began my first entry that March day in 2001: "Well, I have finally decided to do what I should have been doing all these years, while the boys were growing up.  I am going to put down some thoughts, to try to remember some of the funny and sweet things they've done, and to describe my feelings about them.  I think the reason I never did before is that it is something that could have consumed me--and when they were all little together and keeping me busy all day long, I didn't seem to have the time or the energy to do it right. I used to write down snippets in their baby books, but that's about it.  Whenever I'm trying to finish a project or I'm reading a great book, I can't seem to stop--and I'm sure if I'd started trying to do this thing justice, that's all I would've done!"  (Let me say for the record here that when I read this paragraph now, I find it needs some major polishing!)

I didn't keep up the practice of journal writing for long, though, because I wasn't good enough at budgeting my time to include an hour or so a day of sitting at the computer; in fact, I made my final entry on May 21, 2001, not long after my oldest son had gone to his first prom.  And until I started "String of Pearls" with a post called "Ready, Set, Go!" on March 7, 2011--almost exactly ten years to the day from when I started keeping that journal!--I really didn't do much writing.  (Unless you count yearly newsletters to be sent out at the end of the summer to all the football parents...or invitations to the annual fashion show/silent auction luncheon, a fundraiser for my sons' high school...or thank you cards...that sort of thing.)

In a way, I wish blogging had existed back then, in the olden days, when I was a young mom.  If it had, I think I might have been able to motivate myself to do it.  For anyone who finds joy in writing--in figuring out how to construct a sentence in just such a way that it will convey what you want it to (for the purpose of inspiring someone, or perhaps invoking laughter or tears)--blogging is an excellent tool.  There are so many young people who are doing it these days--and they inspire me!  Two blogs that you simply must check out are: my daughter-in-law's "The World Accordion to Renee" at http://accordiontorenee.blogspot.com; and "Something Ivory" at http://something-ivory.blogspot.com, which is written by the wife of my second oldest son's college buddy. They are both wonderful!

Keep on blogging, girls!