Reflecting on the Blog

Struggling with the blog. Struggling with life a bit, actually. Not at all in a Woe Is Me kind of way. But in a determined way. My kids have been back in school for a couple of weeks and my piano studio resumes it's lessons on Monday. This time with the kids out of the house and my wishes as top priority have vanished in the blink of an eye. I *thought* I would purge the clutter in my house with a garage sale the first weekend of the school year. However I totally underestimated how much time the garden, and the produce preservation, would require. In my desire to Do It Right, I postponed the garage sale twice and finally completed it this past weekend. I had such a plan to touch everything in my house and laugh as I listened to it plead for a stay of execution. I touched a lot. And I laughed at a lot of the pleas, but I know I could have another sale next year.


Why do I let my plans grind to a halt because I feel I won't do it well enough? Too much devotion to Planning and too little to Doing is what I'm experiencing. Whether it's the garage sale, the housework or the blog, Life interferes and robs me of my nerve and gumption. Here's where the motivation comes in. I need to conquer this ogre Procrastination and become someone who Does and not just Dreams.


Now to the blog. Life is hectic at times and I have failed at the discipline of regular writing, which was one of my goals. What can I do to Do My Blog Well? Feeling that the photos are what draws ME into blogs that I enjoy, I purchased a snazzy Nikon camera. No more Point and Shoots for me. They make cruddy pictures. I'm pleased with my camera and becoming more pleased with the photos it is producing. However, the big memory stick I purchased to put in the camera is apparently too big for my computer to recognize. Sigh. Another obstacle. I took the stick to the supermarket to put the camera's images on a cd to sidestep around this newest hurdle. I gave it to Tech Support (Brooks) this morning to have him put certain images on the computer so that I can write my post about canning beets with my dad.

"But I think our disk drive is broken," said he. "Yeah, I've put it in and the computer doesn't recognize that there's a disk in there."


Are you kidding me?

Next is my new delight in the blog Pleasant View Schoolhouse. BFF Rebecca has recommended it several times over the years. I honestly only became a blog-reader at the same time I began blogging - about a year and a half ago. So I'd check it now and then, when I thought about it. But just in the last week has it so captured my fancy that it's all I want to think about or talk about. Anna, the writer of that blog has a lovely asthetic that prettys all the aspects of the life that she blogs about. There are plenty of recipes, but her life, like all our lives, is about other meaningful things besides kitchen work. My blog started wanting to be like hers when it grows up.


I started the blog thinking that so many of my contemporaries viewed me as a marvel because I cooked like their mothers, in process, quantity and confidence. So many of them were not comfortable in the kitchen because they hadn't grown up in that room as I suppose I had and they didn't feel qualified to cook for their families as their mothers had cooked for them. I intended my blog to be an encouragement to them and a record for my children, should they ever be interested.

But I think I have things to say on topics other than kitchen work. There's more than one way to Feed a Family. I tend to their brains, their souls, their compliance, their rebellion. Expect to see plenty of kitchen work remain a focal point.


And still many memories of days gone by.


But my life is richer than just the square footage in the kitchen. I have meaningful work with kids who are mastering the piano.


And I'm pretty proud of myself at play, too.


I want to journal it all.