A few weeks ago my fellas and I were having lunch at Chuy’s – as we tend to do every single Saturday of our lives barring illness or some inexplicable urge to eat elsewhere, though why, why would we do that, WHY, WHEN WE KNOW THAT OTHER RESTAURANTS DO NOT OFFER DELUXE TOMATILLO SAUCE, MY WORD – and after we’d placed our order, Alex said, “Mama, can I borrow your phone for a minute? I want to type out a story.”
So I handed him my phone, showed him how to pull up the “notes” feature thing-y, and for the next ten or fifteen minutes he typed away at his story, only pausing occasionally to ask us how to spell a word or to make sure he was saving the document correctly.
He put down the phone when it was time to eat, but after we finished he asked if he could read us his story. And he did. We laughed so hard at what he had written that just thinking about the sweetness of the memory brings tears to my eyes. And at the end of the story – when he smiled so big just from knowing how much his daddy and I had enjoyed what he’d written – I thought, Well, it’s finally happened. His stories really are his own now.
I started this blog when Alex was two. It blows my mind to think about that, to remember how he toddled around with a pacifier in his hand, how he threw fits in his car seat when he didn’t want to go somewhere, how he’d always say, “God made you special and he wuvs you BERRY MUCH” every single night after we said prayers. And for about four years, there was something so fun and so therapeutic about being able to document our days here on my blog. I wouldn’t take anything for having this little record of family memories, and I’m grateful that I’ve written about so many of my favorite “mama moments.” Our stories – his stories – are precious to me; they’re our history, you know?
But now he’s seven. Almost eight. And a lot of his stories? Well, they’re just not mine to tell anymore.
(I just realized that so far this post is making it sound like I’m about to shut down my blog.)
(Unfortunately, that is not the case even a little bit.)
(But apparently I get a little sentimental when I think about the fact that my boy is growing up.)
(I will now attempt to be somewhat more upbeat.)
Anyway, my point in writing this post is just to say that I know I’ve been in a bloggy slump lately. A big huge part of that is that I struggle with what to write about, especially now that the boy is getting older and it makes me feel uncomfortable to share too much of his life here on the interweb. The irony is that I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE having a child this age – I get such a kick out of our conversations and his sense of humor and the way he looks at the world – but I want to be protective of his boundaries. Because even if he doesn’t really understand right now that he needs boundaries, one day he will. And I want him to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I tried my best to be respectful of that.
So given all of that, there’s been a little bit of a bloggy identity crisis going on with me (for the record, that was the absolute lamest thing I’ve EVER written, but I don’t know how else to say it). I’m not good at the home decor stuff. I don’t post a lot of recipes. I love sports, but people get tired of reading about them. I love the Lord, but I’m a smidge too irreverent (and also wordy) for devotional writing. I like to write about family, but honestly, it has been one sad thing after another in my extended family over the last year or so, and that doesn’t really lend itself to WITTY. I like lighthearted and kicky and punchy and fun. But I almost feel like I’m fresh out of, you know, TOPICS.
(Does anybody have an upbeat-yet-poignant piece of music that they could start to play softly in the background?)
(Because I’ve started to sound like the end of a “Doogie Howser, MD” episode.)
(You know, when he was typing in his journal on his sah-weet blue-screen monitor.)
Last thing. And then I’ll stop oh sweet mercy I promise I’ll stop.
The blogosphere is a very different place than it was back in ye olden days, when we wrote posts with fountain pens and delivered them via the Pony Express. People are super-sophisticated about how they market themselves and brand themselves and etc. and so on and so forth. That stuff just isn’t my thing. And because it’s not my thing, there have been times – like, oh, NOW – when I think that I don’t really fit in with whatever this new model of blogging is. I have Twitter because I enjoy it. I have ads because they enable me to cover the cost of running this little parcel of interweb real estate. I don’t have a Facebook page for my blog because I think the internet is probably sick and tired of me already. I don’t really know what all that SEO stuff is and certainly have no idea why I should care.
But despite all the changes, I still love blogging. I really do.
And even though I’m struggling a little bit with what to write about – and with the confidence to post what I write (there are a lot of unpublished posts in my drafts folder because I decide they’re terrible and then I chicken out) – I’m gonna keep trying to push through.
The bottom line is that my lack of bloggy consistency has been bugging me, so I wanted to say something about it, but for heaven’s sake please don’t let me interrupt even one more second of your weekend with my silly nonsense.
Now go eat some fried chicken or something.
And I’ll see y’all next week.
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