o blog, blog, wherefore art thou blog?

As the year draws to an end, I find myself being a stereotypical self-obsessed person and reflecting on my own experiences, successes and failures over the last twelve months.  If you know me well enough, you won't be surprised to hear that much of that focus is on what I perceive as my failures.  I'm never quite the parent that I want to be (especially during that third week each month... still a huge struggle), and I can identify plenty of room to grow in my parenting habits and approaches.  Let's not even talk about weight... just chalk that up to another area for improvement in the new year.  If I were the resolution-making-type, those two items would be at the top of my list.

Coming in third on that list would be this- my silly little blog.  Started in 2005 and then abandoned for two years after four short posts, this blog has already made one major comeback.  This spring will bring its four year birthday/anniversary, and it has brought me much... joy, connections with other bloggers, a sense of accomplishment, a cyber home away from home.  Looking at this past year in comparison to the previous ones, though, the numbers just don't add up.  Not only have I blogged less frequently, the content has shifted in focus from lots of "blather, nonsense and random ramblings" to a whole lot of book talk.  Don't get me wrong, I LOVE writing about books, and I appreciate that this type of blogging has helped secure me a place over at 5 Minutes for Books, as well as a panelist position with the Cybils Awards.

But.  I miss my old type of blogging style, too.  I don't exactly know what happened to it.  I can think of some factors, sure-- my weekly Patch column takes up some of that reflective thinking/pondering/writing, for one.  I've been reading and reviewing more books than in the past years, especially in the amazing picture book world.  I certainly spent more hours babysitting, which was more stressful and exhaustive than I had expected, too.  But those are just three small factors, really.

I don't know why I've gotten away from my former type of blogging... just the sit down and write about what I'm thinking that day.  (Maybe I'm thinking less these days??)  It's almost as if I've just disconnected from that part of myself, and that's something that I'd like to change.  I like being overly reflective, and I've always found that I can be more thoughtful when I write.  I miss the feeling of the tiny keyboard of my netbook under my fingertips as I tap out my thoughts, frequently backspacing to make it just right.  I miss exploring my feelings about my immediate world- even if the scope of it doesn't go too far out of the world of kids, books, and laundry, and I miss trying to expand that world by writing about topics bigger than this, even if that means treading into the murky waters of politics, religion, and other too-often-taboo topics. 

Consider this my not-a-resolution-just-a-hope for 2011: I want to return to my blogging roots and cultivate them a little more to see how they can grow.  I could get all official and say that I plan to blog every day for a month or two, but that only sets me up for the eventual failure that I know I shouldn't focus on as often as I do.  So instead, I simply hope to set aside some time to just open a new post and start typing, without a clear purpose perhaps, without the arc of the post already defined in my head.  We shall see.


Looking forward to 2011 and its clean slate,