32 and 32

Years and weeks, that is... years old and weeks pregnant. I don’t know if that strange-but-sweet coincidental time point was the tipping point or not, but something made me want to get back to the blog. Which in and of itself is a little strange, because I’m not per se a “blogger,” but I did start blogging a year ago and change, at a very different time of my life. That was for an event I was training for (which I’ll revisit), not a “lifestyle” kind of thing. So now, I find myself wondering if I could try the I’m-a-blogger* hat on as an ongoing, indefinite thing. But I am uncertain for many reasons:

(1) Time. Really, who has the time to keep it up? Well, plenty of bloggers seem to, ones who also keep families, hold jobs, dabble in hobbies, sport and compete, and consider themselves dedicated show-watchers (or all of the above). So time can be found, I suppose. And one of the appeals of blogging, to me, at least, is the episodic quality on which blogging is based. It can force its writer to maintain a sort of regularity with it (as rigid as one chooses), which might satiate the desire to write a little every or every-other day, without a level of formality or structure that keeps one from writing every or every-other day.

(2) Audience. Who will read this? Better yet, do I want anyone to read this? Before, during my first and last other blogging experience, I made the blog a blog and not a journal precisely as a tool of using a (mildly) public audience to keep me honest about my training for... (to be revisited - too much of a tangent at this point). So now, what is the excuse, for anyone to read this, or for me to want anyone to read this? I suppose it’s the lonely-girl-15** in all of us that wants to know that there’s someone, out there, who might take an interest in our thoughts, fears, dreams, and better yet, quirky little observations on life. Which brings me to...

(3) Ego. Really? Haven’t I always thought that there’s something a little self-promoting about the blogging genre? It’s completely based on self-publicizing, and it’s (almost?) always written in the first-person, vomited out into cyberspace for all the world to see, or more likely, ignore. I suppose there are worse transgressions, which isn’t an excuse, but... well... okay. I am stumped on this one. Can’t rationalize this away, but I guess I will procede because...

(4) Posterity (Strikethrough)

(5) Memory. I have these running little thoughts in my head, and random times during the day*** and sometimes I actually think they contain little sparks of brilliance. Or wit. Or both. But I rarely write them down, so they’re usually lost forever. This kind of space might allow me a little more opportunity to get them out of my head and into the world, for better or for worse.

(6) Practice. By this I mean blogging-as-writing-practice. So as uncertain as I am about this whole endeavor, it will at least get me writing. And you can’t be a writer if you don’t.... write.

(7) Posterity - yes, really. Perhaps the best of all uncertainties and biggest reasons why I might actually stick to this, is that 32-weeker in my tummy, the one who’s at present jabbing me inside my ribcage****-- a sort of game we play now after dinner, who one very-soon day is going to introduce herself to the world. Baby K, that is. Although I have a private writing project going to her, I thought it might be kind of, well, neat, to leave her a little blogacy, one that when she’s old enough to read and understand, might dismiss as being perfectly uncool. Which is totally ok—thinking your parents are uncool is one of the age-old rites of passage, as certain as sunsets and taxes. But still; Baby K, this blog’s for you.
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*I rather enjoy playing with punctuation in my writing... all of it, rather than keeping to one mark like Faulkner and his dash, and it’s much easier to find the freedom to do so in creative spaces like this one. Makes me feel a little like Dave Eggers to ramble on in a footnote, but hey, I love Dave Eggers.
**or whatever her age was
***one might call them “microblogs,” although one might be incorrect.
**** For nulliparous folks out there, imagine you had a little creature inside your diaphragm jabbing you with a fork right under and between your ribs - that is the only way I can describe the sensation.