I was looking back over this blog the other day and it made me a little sad when I noticed that the first year I had it I made 159 posts and every year the number has declined. Last year I was only in double digits, and low ones. The dawning of facebook changed everything in some ways for the worse but, more so, for the better. Sure a lot of people post every time they fart or burp but I'm happy to know where they are and that I can contact them again after, for some, almost a lifetime ago. This gives me great comfort. I grew up in a small close-knit town in Texas under unique circumstances. We were a small town but with a great addition...a major university next to us. It made for an idyllic upbringing; both sheltered and exposed to worldly people and things. And as I grew into a teenager, it made for lots of excitement. I knew most everyone in town yet there were new people enrolling in the college every year; new friends to be made. And those of us who grew up there in those grand days have a wonderful, shared experience like brothers and sisters. I want to be connected with them just as I do with my own sister. I know that especially since facebook became popular blogs have become passe, even a clique but I'll never regret it. Even though lots of time goes by when people don't read it, it doesn't matter; it's really for me anyway. Just because it's public doesn't mean that I need the public to approve of it. My mother gave me such a hard time when I started it telling me that it was very self-indulgent. Okay, whatever. Now my niece with her young family has started one. So have several of her friends who have started having kids. I had to bully Miz Juney into starting one and I don't think she regrets it either. Now her pregnant daughter has started one. Julia and I have said many times that we wish there would have been blogs back when our kids were little. Even if no one reads it, it's an online history of my life. "Online" presumes that others will read it but not necessarily to those of us who have one. It's the creativity of it that is appealing; adding photos and trying to string sentences together that make ordinary things seem lovely. I post about my life; my family and my art. I waver back and forth because sometimes I want to use it to attract business but I also want to share my personal life and have this to look back on as my history. I'm going to try to do more posting this year. I hope you will stop in from time to time (I know some of you gave up on me for a while when I wasn't posting much) and let me know you were here.
