This feels funny. But good funny. Happy funny.
As I type this, I’m not even sure where to begin. This may be long (sorry). For the short intro, see here.
Is blogging even a thing anymore? Is what I’m doing right now a creating a website? (It sure took a lot more to build this than it did signing up on Blogger 15 years ago!) You see, I used to have this blog. I shut it down about 10 years ago, but for the five years that I had it, it was a lifeline. I was a young, new mom. We moved out of state away from family, friends, and everything that I had known. I started blogging as a way to kind of keep a diary. I quickly learned of blog hops and made connections with other people. I slowly grew that blog into a hobby where I shared recipes and crafts and memories. I was able to work with some companies and do some fun product reviews and giveaways. It gave me a place to vent, it kept me busy, it allowed me to learn so much, and it helped me feel like part of a community.
Since that time, we moved back to our home state. I finished my graduate degree. I went back to work. I had two more kids. All three kids got involved in a hundred thousand things. Life moved fast. Life is still moving fast. I felt like I was a machine, checking things off of to-do lists only to wake up and repeat over and over again. When I had some time to sit and think about what I could do “for me”… I thought back to that time when I used to blog.
Again, is that even a thing anymore? When I google “mom blogs” now…. WOW. They’re entire websites, with categories, and storefronts, and this and that… And I got scared and thought there’s no way. I don’t have time to learn. But the seed was planted. There was a new laptop under the tree at Christmas. It was time.
I had to learn. WordPress? Web-host? What? Again… Coming from Blogger circa 2009. So I researched and I fiddled in some spare time. I’ve pieced Peaceful Mess together. I’m sure I will continue to learn and redesign and restructure, but here I am.
I imagine things have changed. That is my next mission: Figure out how this works going forward.
I can already feel one things that hasn’t changed, though. This feeling. The feeling of my fingers on the keyboard. The feeling of writing. The feeling of having something. The feeling of this space. The feeling of wanting to control it to be whatever it should be (even though I don’t know what that is) but also now, as I’m typing, knowing that it doesn’t matter what this turns out to be. This is mine. I don’t have to have rules. This is my mess. My mess where I can find peace. This is my Peaceful Mess.