Disappearing Act

Ok, ok… it’s been nearly four weeks since I posted on my blog.   No only that, it’s been four weeks since I typed my own blog’s name into the web browser.   Of anyone else’s blog’s name for that matter.   I’ve barely checked email and only gotten on the computer here and there to read the headlines on CNN.

I’m sure all of you had at least one relationship in college that you disappeared on.   Mine was a semi-casual boyfriend that one day I just up and decided that, not only did I not want to go out with him any more, but that everything about him – even the way he breathed for goodness sakes – drove me insane and I couldn’t stand one more  minute in his presence.   There was nothing wrong with him, mind you.   I just couldn’t be in the same airspace as him or I felt the urge to poke him under the ribs.   Not rational.   Not fair.   He, fortunately, was a real stellar guy and played along, ignoring me in return, except for a wink here and there, as if to say, “Hey, girl, I know this game.   You’re gonna miss me someday.”

Well, I never really did miss him (though a semester later we laughed over it and became friends), but neither did I ever really have an explanation for my radical distain.   I guess you could say that’s kind of what happened to me and poor old MommyBlog this past month.

It all started when Casey and I began to talk about expanding this blog – I’ve written about that before – and I decided to do some due diligence and really see who out there had great mommy blogs, who was doing well and why they were so popular.   I spent a week reading, watching and checking it into the Who’s Who of the blogosphere.   And you know what?   I was buried.   Suddenly, I panicked.     Twitter?   Oh my goodness, what on earth?   Now all the really cool mommy bloggers were tweeting all over the place and I didn’t even know a tweet from a twit.   Forget Facebook.    I joined that a year ago and I think I’ve been on it four times.   That sent me into reliving the clammy palms of high school: everyone seeing how  many friends I had and how cool (or not) I was.   I can barely keep up with daily email chatter,   much less pings and pongs and real time updates.   Hell, I can barely keep my dishwasher unloaded.

Then there were the playlists, so that your readers could bop along to your own selected  while keeping up with your kids’ antics.   Blogrolls a hundred sites  long.     Rolling headline pictures, newsfeeds and buttons galore.     And the wackiest of all: half the mommy blogs I read didn’t even have anything to do with the author’s kids!   I suddenly felt like Laura Ingalls walking into a swinger’s bar.   Old fashioned, un-hip and so not with it.

Honestly, I had to take a break.   I needed to just hang with my kids, clean my house, and get this family ready for vacation (which I’m on now!).   Writer’s blog slayed me and just thinking about blogging was like fingernails on the chalkboard. But the salty air of the Outer Banks has cleared my head a little and with no housework and only time to laugh and play and eat pint-loads of ice cream, I think that I may be ready to hit the keypad again.

Why do I write? To  chronicle my kids’ lives.   To create something that Kenny and Cooper can look back on one day and read and say, “Hey – we really put Mom through the ringer!   Let’s send her on a first class trip to Paris next Mother’s Day…”   But really: to someday share a piece of their lives with them, and to share with them a glimpse into the woman I once was, back before they can remember.

When we lived in Arizona, Casey walked out one night onto the golf course we lived on to hit a few balls in the sunset while I put baby Kenny to bed.   He hit a hole in one, and looked around triumphantly.   Not a single soul saw it happen.   Dejected, he walked into the house and said, “Now I know what lonely is.”   And that sums up why we blog.   Our exploits and triumphs aren’t complete until we retell them to someone else.

And that is why I will continue to write.