Writing has long been an outlet for me. I kept nearly daily diaries from the age of 12 until I got married 10 years later. (I still have all those composition notebooks but I haven't been brave enough to go back and read my (mostly) teenage thoughts. I am mostly interested, I guess, in the ones from when I was dating my now husband.) There are countless times in my life where I haven't been able to figure out what I think about something until I write it all out.
When I was young I was convinced I'd be a writer and/or librarian some day. I wrote stories often, liked creating elaborate backstories for my Oregon Trail characters (I much preferred that to the hunting and actual trail-ing). I was a library volunteer as soon as I was old enough and I don't know when I decided that wasn't something I wanted to do anymore. And my writing dreams were probably snuffed out between school papers in high school and college although I took and really enjoyed a creative writing class in high school. That was probably the last time I wrote a fictional story.
This writing led to a livejournal in college (are those still on the internet??) and eventually to this blog as well as a private blog that is basically a digital diary but without teenage angst (more or less a narrative of our lives). The time I have had to give this blog over the years has come and gone as well as the energy I have to devote to it as well. There was a period where I was publishing something every weekday or nearly. I do not know how I did that and still parent a 2-3 year old. Now it's less than that, even though I am childless for ~33 hours a week.
Some of that is due to less ideas, some of it is due to a saturation of the market. Do I really have anything worthwhile to say??? (Is all of this worthwhile to say????) Some of it is just priorities have shifted. My blogging never really recovered after getting Sam and the giant realization of what life with two kids was like, especially when the baby was a complete surprise. Even once Luke started kindergarten that fall and Sam was napping three times a day at that point, trying to find time to write around nap and school schedules just never happened like it had with 1 kid and no school schedule.
However, the days where I go to bed feeling good about how the day went, what I got done (should I be measuring the quality of my days based on how much I've accomplished??), often the days that feel good are days in which I've done some writing. There are many other factors, obviously, like connecting with both boys, getting uninterrupted time to talk to Matt, nobody fighting, etc, but of at home days where I go to bed feeling rightly productive, it's been a day where I've written.
Reading is my main hobby and puzzles are one I can do easily when around my family, but blogging is something I do nearly entirely on my own time. It's been fit in before kids are awake, during nap time, during quiet time, on the previously rare times I was home alone, and after kids are in bed. I earn very little money from this endeavor (should I figure that out?? Is it worth figuring out???) but I very much appreciate having an avenue to share things that have worked for me and/or my family, share books/puzzles/etc that we like, share recipes, and talk about various parenting challenges.
However, my favorite thing about keeping a blog for the last decade + is how I have documentation through all these young parenting years. When Sam was little I would look back and see things I had written when Luke was the same age. To see the progression of what I've written about, different stages of life we've gone through. My more heavy food DIYing, sewing, zero waste, parenting struggles, etc. I've not documented nearly all of my life but enough that I can remember the different life stages I was in at different points. This is mostly relevant to me but I've been really glad I have it. More than once I've used my own blog to reference something!
Blogging doesn't take the time that it used to, right now it's around 2.5 hours a week which is mostly spent writing and a tiny bit editing or taking pictures. There was a time where it was closer to 6 but that when I was writing something for every weekday. I don't think about blog posts nearly as much as I used to but I still appreciate getting time to write something.
All of my hobbies I've written about so far, and this covers most of them, have mostly benefited me. It doesn't really matter to anyone else if I ever finish a puzzle, for instance. This one too although it's public in hopes that reading about something I've written has resonated with SOMEONE (and I've gotten enough nice comments over the years to know at least some of it has). I have benefited getting my thoughts out here the most and that's ok. It's definitely a hobby but one that engages my mind in a different way than nearly anything else I do. It's helped me clarify what I'm actually thinking and, mostly, document our lives in a way that I wouldn't have if I hadn't started writing here all those years ago.
Related: Book Love: Big Magic (and why I think you should blog) from January 2016!
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