The ABC's of Why I Still Blog

Excited to be sharing a post on the A-Z Challenge site today. Here we go...

When people I know in real life discover I have a blog, the first question out of their mouth is usually, 'What's it about'? 

It's been seventeen years since I first hit publish and I still sometimes want to reply, "It's about nothing."  It's like the Seinfeld of blogs, except not as funny. 

So why am I still at it? 

Many reasons, but in the spirit of the A-Z, I'm going to handpick a few letters and list just a few.

A is for Archive

My blog has become a record of a life I might otherwise have forgotten. Do I need to remember that weekend spent with friends? The chocolate cake I baked? The flowers my husband sent? That we ate tacos on a Tuesday night? 

Maybe not, but I do love the picture my blog paints of what ordinary life has looked like through the years. 

I love too, that it's a timeline I can refer back to when I'm trying to remember where it was we saw that beautiful view, ate the fabulous dessert, got lost on a back country road. Just this past weekend I was with college friends and we were trying to remember how many times we'd stayed in a particular mountain house. Nobody could recall from memory, but my blog could. 

B is for Belonging

The most common comment I've received on my blog through the years is some variation of "Me too...I feel the same...You said what I was thinking." 

When I read a blog and find myself nodding at something that is perhaps quite ordinary that the writer is sharing I feel less alone. There's something comforting in the thought that we're all in our own homes, living our own lives, yet doing very similar things. We're caring for our families, cooking meals, feeling similar frustrations and celebrating small victories. 

In a world that seeks to constantly divide, one of the quiet gifts of blogging is discovering how much we have in common. 

C is for Curiosity

Blogging makes me think. 

It makes me write things down and consider them. It makes me look for life's little things that might have gone unnoticed, but now fill me with wonder. 

D is for Discovery 

Writing in this little space I've created has taught me a lot about myself. Who I am. Who I've been. Who I want to be. Sometimes you don't know what you think until you give yourself the space to say it.  

M is for Memory 

Perhaps my favorite thing about blogging. 

Reading old posts and seeing past versions of myself. Remembering people, places, and seasons of life I'd forgotten I'd forgotten. 

My blog remembers things I don't. 

P is for perspective

Flannery O'Connor is credited with a quote that says, 'I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say." 

That has always resonated with me. Writing something down helps me articulate the jumble of thoughts swimming around my brain. It adds clarity and sometimes even changes the way I understand something. It makes me think about a particular topic from different angles and then figure out where I land. 

R is for Reflection

Blogging about an experience allows me to relive it. Do I still feel now what I felt back then? Sometimes the answer is yes, sometimes it's no. 

Sometimes I discover time has quietly changed the story. 

S is for Sharing

There's something a little bit strange, but also a little bit freeing, in telling pieces of my life to people I might never meet. I write about ordinary days, thoughts, experiences, and small moments, and somehow they become a conversation. 

T is for Time

Oh how the years roll by. My blog says so. 

Seventeen years of ordinary days, photographs, thoughts, recipes, travels, celebrations, disappointments, discoveries, and all the little things in between.  Seventeen years of hitting publish. 

So why do I still blog? 

After seventeen years I've discovered that 'nothing' is actually quite a lot. 

What about you? Why do you still blog? 

Joyce at http://www.fromthissideofthepond.com/