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This question was posed by Lisa over at Boondock Ramblings (https://lisahoweler.com/2023/08/30/why-do-you-blog/). It’s been a crazy week. Between kids and not feeling well, misplacing my laptop, family drama, and being crazy busy, writing just didn’t happen. Think of it a little bit like a “Friday Five” from days gone by…

• I want to know a few things:
• Why do you blog?
• How did you get started blogging?
• What has been the benefit of blogging in your life?
• What have been the best parts of your blogging experience?
• Have there been any bad parts of blogging?
• You can answer these questions here or write a separate post and then come back and let me know.

Why do you blog?

I blog because at some point, I feel the need to write, and I’ve been writing in one form or another since I was a kid. I also find that many times when I think about things, I have bits and pieces that show themselves and then skitter away again, or thoughts that come from different directions, and writing helps order them and tack them down more coherently. In some sense, it’s bringing order to the chaos of my thoughts, and I often have to stop to take one thought at a time and record it. If you read things that I’ve had to ponder over a bit, sometimes I end up with sentences that don’t quite make sense because I started them at one angle, thought about things for a bit, and then continued slightly differently for the rest of the sentence. I do try to edit that out, to the best of my ability. I’m also a person who likes to play games that make order out of chaos, such as spider solitaire, because it helps clear my mind and order my thoughts, but it drives people around me a little crazy sometimes.

In some sense, I’d love to be able to earn something through blogging, but I know that’s a very uncertain proposition. However, if I don’t write, I’ll never know if I could or not.

How did you get started blogging?

I got started blogging on Livejournal back in the fall of 2001. One of my high school friends had found Livejournal and directed me to one of her posts. I read the post, read other ones of hers, and saw what Livejournal did, and I was intrigued. I asked her for an invite code, which she graciously shared with me, and the rest was history!

I had a lot of time back in those days as well, and my life was somewhat more interesting – first living in Chicago, then moving to Germany and all…

What has been the benefit of blogging in your life?

Well, besides the bringing order to the chaos of my thoughts, which I mentioned before, I really made a lot of friends online. At this point in my life, when most of my at-home interaction is with children, the give and take with reading and writing helps me feel like an adult, and I need that.

What have been the best parts of your blogging experience?

I think the best thing has been interacting with others, to the point at which they are friends. I think I met something like 30 people from Livejournal across four countries (and two continents), and that was wonderful. The community for Orthodox Christianity there was also amazing, and with being in Germany, it was my connection to Orthodoxy in the English-speaking world.

Have there been any bad parts of blogging?

I think the worst part is that it’s easy to read one little thing and blow it up out of proportion. I mentioned once, when my oldest was just weeks old, that her pediatrician said that she should go on formula because she wasn’t gaining weight. At that point, the most important thing was to get her to have enough to eat, as she had lost weight since she was born and wasn’t gaining anything. Let me tell you, it was a relief when she’d actually sleep because she had enough in her stomach to make her happy. However, a friend – someone who had become an “in real life” friend – replied back that I absolutely needed to change pediatricians, because it was absolutely unacceptable that he want my baby to have formula. Mind you, this friend meant well, and by this time, she had at least two kids of her own, so it wasn’t like she was saying things about a subject that was unfamiliar with. It’s just that it came across as so judgemental over a situation that she wasn’t dealing with.

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I’m tired. If you would, keep us in prayer.

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