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Blog-aversary

This month marks a rather strange and oddly special occasion for me: my one year blog-aversary. For exactly one year I’ve been sharing way more than anyone ever wanted to know and the strangest part is, I’m not really sure why.

Writing for me feels something like this. Sometimes, it is like pouring blood from a stone or compliments from a toddler. I want it – I want to, desperately. But I just can’t. And every word and sentence feels like a painstaking struggle. Usually the finished product feels like a struggle to read. And then are those times that I absolutely don’t want to write a thing. I want to finally get in that great workout, or run to the store or do 20 other different things and I just can’t. I literally have to write. I don’t even know what happens. Suddenly it’s mid-morning or the middle of the night and I’m not even sure what I’m typing or how much time is elapsing and suddenly, well it’s as if it’s written itself.
And that kind of writing is seriously exhausting. But I’ve been reading Brene Brown’s Daring Greatly (and as Nicki Minaj would say – I’m obsessed with it) and she’s teaching me that to be brave is to allow myself to be vulnerable. And there is no where that I’m more open and vulnerable than buried deep within the nooks and crannies of these words – whatever they do and don’t say or imply about my insecurities as a wife, mother, friend, or citizen. To write it all down feels scary. To share it feels like I want to vomit.

No, I mean that literally. You know that feeling that you have right before you are going to throw up? That lump in your throat that is welling up and you are thinking to yourself objectively, jeez, I’m so not in the mood to vomit right now but before you can finish that concrete thought, your head is already in the toilet. This is what it feels like every single time I hit the share button. I am dangling over the toilet about to let loose my dinner.
And then I talk to my really awesome partner who I am so lucky to have found. And he reminds me that it doesn’t matter. Because I already did the hardest part: I wrote it. The writing of it is what matters, even if no one ever reads it or no one likes it or one person likes it or 12 people hate it. That the writing of it, in and of itself, is what makes me brave. This blog makes me the virtual equivalent of the tree falling in the forest. Even if no one hears or sees me toppling over or getting back up, it still matters because I know what I put out there, what I finally let go of.

And I am proud. I am proud that I have stuck with something for a whole year because I am a serial quitter. I am proud that in being super scared and vulnerable, I have become a little bit more brave. And I am also super grateful, because everyone has a blog now. According to Disney, even dogs have blogs. So really, I’m not so special. And people are super inundated with random crap to read from every which way. And if you took even one minute out of your day to read my random stuff at some point, than I’m ridiculously grateful and humbled. So to you Dad, who’s clicked through to my site 6,975 times, thank you. And to the other 25 folks who maybe even gave me just one precious minute of their day. Thank you from the bottom of the heart. Stay tuned, I promise to keep trying to pour more blood from this stone with just the right blend of random crap and nourishment to feed our souls.

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