a step back

I realized after my last post that I may not have sounded like a real person. In case there's any doubt in your mind, here is the conversation my husband and I just had:

me: "Honey, how did dimes and nickels get in the laundry quarter jar?" [we still live in an apartment building and have the college-style coin-operated washer/dryer combo shared by the entire hallway]

husband: "I don't know."

me: "You don't know?" [in one of those "yeah, right" tones]

husband: "Maybe it's kinda like how you left our lunch pail at work and denied it." [we now share his lunch bag because I accidentally left my lunch bag in my trunk with old egg salad in it over the summer; I made him throw the whole thing away at a trash can outside the grocery store. my entire car smelled like rotten egg salad, as if non-rotten egg salad doesn't smell bad enough]

me: "It's a bag, not a pail."

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So a friend told me today that my blog is "intriguing." When I asked for clarification, he gave me a couple of reasons for his comment, one of which was that he doesn't understand why anyone would want to create a public blog. It's a good question. There are so many ideas out there, so many websites. And everyone will continue to have their own opinions anyway, no matter my ramblings.

I gave him some unconvincing and generic answer like "I guess I just see it as a way to share what I feel are worthwhile thoughts and experiences with other people."

Then I came home and checked my friends' blogs for new posts -- all three of them. Three blogs that is, not three friends. A college friend of mine has a parenthood blog in which she shares the joys and trials of being a new mom, in an engaging and endearing, non soccer-mom sort of way, I might add. (I guess five month old babies can't play soccer anyway, but I don't think my friend will ever be this mom even when her daughter is of soccer-playing age.) Anyway, in her blog this friend mentioned that my first post made her think about more than her newly domestic life centered around her child, and that, for a moment, it made her feel small and that she easily forgets the larger world. So then I realized that this is exactly my fear of sharing my thoughts on our first-world responsibilities and obligations. I don't want anyone to feel like what they do is not good enough. I don't want to sound preachy. And I certainly don't want anyone to get the impression that I think I have all the answers. It was then that I realized that this is why I'm blogging. I'm doing this because I, like the rest of us, am searching. I'm looking for answers, or at least for other opinions on my thoughts. It just so happens that I like to take on the world's problems on a daily basis :-) And writing helps me to channel my thoughts and feelings into something more comprehensible. Doing it in blog form allows my friends and family that I may not get to talk to very frequently to be in conversation with me about my thoughts, or to just ignore me on any given day when they can't handle me! It doesn't mean that I think devoting most of one's time, energy, and love to their child is wasteful, or that anyone should think that! No, this is one of the most important, foundational, agapic things we as people do! So my friend may be at a different point than me right now, but her contribution is no less important to making our world a better place.

All of this by way of saying I welcome your thoughts on my daily musings and hope this is a way I can let you in, since many of you are not as geographically close as I would like. I hope you might even, at some point, get something worthwhile from what I have to say...

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"True happiness is found in unselfish love, a love which increases in proportion as it is shared."
~Thomas Merton