Writing Myself Out

(One of my favorite photos from Halloween 2010 — my Sara in her duck costume, giving a “high five” to her uncle Darcy in his toga and laurel wreath.)

Thank you all for making me feel so welcome in the blogging “neighbourhood” — it’s been a treat to read your comments, and I look forward to having a chance to comment on all the other inspirational layouts in this blog hop.

I was hoping to have some time to play with “paper and pretties” tonight, but that’s not how my day went. I poured most of my energy today into playing on the floor with my baby girl, cleaning the kitchen (urgh — it was such a mess, and the rest of the house isn’t much better right now), sorting laundry and taking part in my daughter’s beginner swim class. She is the tiniest one in her class, but amazingly confident in the water already. She has figured out the proper leg and arm movements and goes “swimming” (with me holding her up) enthusiastically after the balls and toy boats, watches the instructor and the other kids (like her 2-year-old cousin Theo and one of the girls who goes to the same babysitter) carefully to see what they’re doing, and is a good sport in the game/song times (we do songs like “Motor Boat, Motor Boat”, “Bingo” and the “mm mm went the little green frog” one, adapted for swimming practice). She even tried a bit of bubble-blowing today, although she hasn’t quite figured out how it’s done. I love seeing her wet and grinning, and squealing happily in the water.

I am eager to learn more about the art of blogging — it’s still a very new “medium” for me, although I did attempt it a few years ago, only to abandon the effort because I couldn’t figure out what I wanted my blog to “be”. When I tried using it as a diary, I ended up writing mostly when I was feeling sad or overwhelmed, and that didn’t present a very balanced picture — and it was also weird having posts like that so “out there”. And when I thought about using a blog for sharing crafty projects, I felt as though I wasn’t making projects consistently enough to make that worthwhile. I’m still wrestling with what the content here will be. I’d like to strike a healthy balance between open, honest sharing about my everyday and yet not being “too” personal, and also have a place to talk about ideas and experiences I have had in the past or am now having, and share my projects and some of the rationale/thinking behind them. Any advice from those who’ve “been there” would be greatly appreciated.

With that in mind, I’ve decided to try Shimelle Laine’s Blogging for Scrapbookers class. I’d love to hear from anyone who’s taken the class, and/or interested in talking about it. It’s now one of her archived classes, so there isn’t ongoing discussion on the forum as far as I know. So if you’re planning to take it, let me know — it would be great to have others to bounce ideas off.

Anyhow, thanks again for the comments — they do my heart good.