quaking aspen

Paper Napkin discusses it well here (though I am not as decisive. Yet).

As NaBloPoMo approached this year, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to resume blogging. And I’m still thinking about it. Or more precisely, thinking about NOT doing it. Do I just want to let my blog go, possibly for good? Is it only worth doing if I do it consistently? Maybe I will consistently do it every November (though I’m not doing very well this year, missed how many days)? Hmm. Maybe I just like Twitter instead?

Maybe the slice o’ life, random blogging doesn’t work for me anymore. Maybe if it had a specific focus, scrapbooking, crafting, photography, writing/author blog, something. I’ll keep thinking.

The thing is, I enjoy reading blogs. A lot. Reading them makes me want to participate, be part of the “blogging community” (though which one exactly I’m not sure), but I’m not sure that’s enough of a reason for me to spend the time and energy on it. I think blogs can be important as “platforms” for an author, for example. Or like Katie the Scrapbook Lady – if I blogged about scrapbooking regularly, I might actually get on a couple of creative teams. Like I sometimes want to. But I don’t know how to expand my readership. (Do lots of readers make the blog worth doing? Maybe not, but then again, if I wanted to talk to myself I could save time and do it aloud.) I have certainly found that giving stuff away – crochet patterns, ahem – and putting up tutorials gets you a lot of hits. But again – do I care?

The community thing again – people with lots of readers can appeal for help and get it, so often. We are a generous people, we bloggers. Sometimes just a little help, advice or whatnot, sometimes a lot, as in the case of NieNie or others. Sometimes, I wish that could be me, if I needed it. (And for the record, as a reader I do participate in stuff like that, charities, donations, whatnot. Not all of them, obviously, but some.) But again, have to put in the effort. Is it worth it? More to the point, do I have the energy to do so? Because it seems to take me SO FREAKING LONG to put together posts, especially when photos are involved. And then the day is GONE and I’ve been on the computer the whole time. Which is not good.

Plus my growing feeling of discontent with virtual relationships. (And I can’t ignore that at least part of me wanting to be involved is a social thing, probably resulting from not enough real life friends.) How they seem more frustrating than anything else… I mean, I have enough trouble maintaining real-life, face to face friendships. Should I really be dividing my energies there? It just seems more depressing than anything else at times, like I’m being taunted – “oh boy, here’s someone I have so much in common with, we would totally be BFFs! Too bad we live THOUSANDS OF MILES APART and it will never happen.” It just leaves me feeling lonelier, with more of a craving for actual contact. I already feel enough like an isolated weirdo – it just exacerbates that.

Which is all probably reflective of my social life of late, or lack thereof, how I’m so homebound and never seem to see anyone, not even dates with my sweetie. How I want to feel more support, more of a safety net. Because I’m teetering? And because I know the unexpected happens, and you may NEED it – hard to tell. Or maybe I need it now. And that whole waiting for my life to start thing, feeling rootless – it doesn’t help. I know I need to make more of an effort in my real life. (In spite of frustrations with some people – people I’d like to get to know but who just don’t return my phone calls, one particular person who won’t see me at all.)

I’m not sure if blogging helps or hinders that.

At our house for Halloween, we had a panda,

Indiana Jones (the stubble was his idea),

and Billy (with singing Gizmo the Mogwai).

I was a pirate in a cheezy tshirt costume, I’m afraid. Next year we’ll get one photo with all of us, doggone it.

But we did pumpkins!

The boy’s own design.

And mine.