Two Years of Blogging!

It's been two years since I started this blogging (ad)venture.  Well, I'd actually started it the December before, but that beginning was marked by a single post that went unaccompanied by any others for eight months, when I began to write here in some earnest.  I took a quick look at some statistics on my blog the other day, and realize that I post eight days out of every ten; that average has been brought down somewhat by my less frequent blog posts in the last couple of months, but I hope that this can change back again as life continues to settle down.

I had no idea, in those early days of blogging, how much I would come to love being here.  I've known for a long time that I enjoy writing, but I had no idea that I would like writing for other people to read it.  In fact, for the first couple of months I wrote the blog only for myself, and it was with fear and trepidation that I finally opened it up to more public viewing.

I don't blog nearly as often as I'd like to...which may be hard to believe, given that I post quite regularly.  There's always lots percolating in my brain and I often have ideas that I never get to because I have only so much time to do this.  So many ideas never even get to the page.  My window for writing closed a little further when Seth began waking up at/before 6:00am; prior to this, my private time of the day occurred between 6:00-7:15 am.  I dearly miss that time, and so I now end up blogging at night, when I should probably be sleeping.

Like many people, I wish I could write a book.  I hate stating that publicly because it's likely a dream that I won't every accomplish, but in lieu of being able to actually write a book, it honestly feels like I need to be here.  This is my outlet.  It's a way of self-expression, a way of receiving support from all of you who leave me comments or send me emails, and a manner of chronicling bits of our lives.  Mostly I just like putting words to paper.

I always fear what people will think of what I write, and of how I write it; that fear has lessened over time, but it's still there every time I publish something.  But from the beginning I decided that I would work hard at being fairly authentic about what I write - there are certainly layers of authenticity in everyone, but I'm working at peeling them back.

I've been asked numerous/many times since bringing the younger kids home why I keep blogging and I've addressed this here once before.  Many blogs focus on the adoption journey up to the point of bringing kids home and then gradually taper off until there's no blog left any more; quite a few people have expressed surprise that my blog has continued.  My response is that my blog was never intended to be exclusively about adoption.  Of late, of course, I've written a lot about adoption-related topics, but my blog is more than that to me.  I love to write about my kids beyond the adoption topic, about parenting, about h/schooling, about ideas I'm thinking through, and lots of other stuff.  Life is the fodder of my blog, and I love it.

So thank you for being here.  Thank you for you support.  Thank you to the 92 who have pressed the "follow" button on my blog - I look at those little pictures and/or names and I write for you.  Thank you for reading my insufficient words.  Also, though I never want anyone to feel pressured to comment on my blog (I am not a comment counter!), I thank you so very, very much for your comments, which have been so encouraging to me.  Even the one non-supportive comment that I received by an anonymous blogger (see comments after this post) was helpful because, after initially causing me some grief, it helped me crystallize my thoughts enough to formulate a response that I felt good about.  In some of the really hard days of June and July, in the weeks after we brought the kids home, I would sit in my bed late at night, crying out of despair and exhaustion, and I would read over and over the comments that were left on my blog and the emails sent to me in response to something I'd posted.  Without fail, your words of response have helped me.

I'm looking forward to the next two years of blogging and invite you to continue to travel with me on this journey we call life.  There is so much yet to explore, so much to appreciate about life, so much to talk about, so much to learn about living each day to the fullest.  I can hardly wait!