(Note: since I never posted photos from our summer holiday, I’ve been using the artsy sunset ones to illustrate orphan posts).
There was such a warm, heartfelt response to yesterday’s post about homework/studying/piano practice that I feel inspired to reply with a thank-you post. How I appreciated hearing your different perspectives: from someone who teaches to someone who remembers being the student who had to work extra hard to succeed.
What surprises me every time I sit down to write a new post is how my ideas change as I write them down. I can plan to write a post on, say, canning tomatoes, but the writing happens, and in following unexpected and twisting lines of thought, the post turns out to be about feminism. Or something. You know what I mean.
It’s the mystery of the process that makes me want to be a writer: because the writing itself is the key to discovery. You can’t plan it out in advance, not entirely. You have to see what develops between you and the word, the written word.
When I started this post, I planned to write more about Albus and how we are hoping to address his struggles, but the words came hard, and I sensed my growing discomfort. He’s ten. When I was ten, I sure wouldn’t have wanted my mom telling everyone about my struggles–or more precisely, about her interpretation of my struggles. So, while I’m glad that I choose to write yesterday’s post, I’m going to choose not to delve further into the subject today. What I want to say is thank you for your thoughtful responses. They give me hope, and ideas.
(One of which is to clean up this office/playroom space to make a proper study space for all the people in the house who need a quiet room in which to work. I include myself. Put it on the weekend-project list. Because, though the digging starts on Friday, that new porch/office is still a few months off.)
This is also a rather long-winded way of saying, I love hearing from the people who are reading my blog! I love when it feels like a conversation. I love the connections this blog continues to bring, some of them quite random, some to people I would never have gotten to know otherwise.
Ah, yes. One big sappy thank you note of a post. If I were writing this in pen, I’d be doodling all around the edges in vines and flowers and stick-ray suns. Maybe even hearts.
I think the best blogs are those that show this process: “What surprises me every time I sit down to write a new post is how my ideas change as I write them down.” The beauty of the blog is the perpetual work in progress (and of its author).
Yes, there’s something profoundly interesting in watching a blog and its author change over time. It’s a window into the progression of other people’s lives, or it can be.