...that I have spent waaaay too much time on Facebook recently. I am the first to admit that it's sort of hypocritical. I have made fun of these sorts of social networking sites for years now and have sort of prided myself on the fact that I didn't participate. I already have this blog so it seemed a bit ridiculous to me to have even more sites I must keep up with and to put myself out there even more. I am already so involved with so many sites because of my job that I resisted another one. So I felt like I needed to take a step back and evaluate how and why and where I wanted to be.
The blog for me is simple. Since I was about nine years old, I've kept a journal. Writing, for me, has always been a way for me to sort through my own thoughts and organize them into something I can understand. It's a fairly subconscious act for me. I can sit and write for an hour and have no memory of what I've written. I don't think about it at all. I just write and then I go back and read it and I can follow this path of my thoughts that makes way more sense than if I tried to articulate it. It's hard to explain. It's as if there's this other person inside of me that writes it. Like Iam possessed.
After the birth of my first child, I realized that I needed some way to capture all the events and feelings and thoughts into one place and the blog made sense to me. Many of my friends have weblogs that they keep as a means of updating family and friends on their lives. Like me, they include stories and photos of the children. But I realized quickly that if my family or my colleagues at work had access to this, I would heavily edit what I wrote. I knew that it wouldn't be really real. Already struggling with my identity as mom/wife/Shannon, I wanted the option to present a real version of myself without worrying my mother or freaking out my father.
This Christmas, I am compiling some of the appropriate entries and pictures from the last year into books for the grandparents. I will not include stories of any deep-rooted insecurities or political commentary. I have learned that those sort of topics won't play well in a coffee table book at my in-laws house.
I suppose I could have chosen a private blog, for my eyes only, and it would have accomplished many of the same goals in terms of documentation and compilation. But what I felt, and continue to feel, is the ongoing need to actually feel connected to people who have the same thoughts and feelings as me. I read several blogs similar to mine. Some written by my friends. Some by complete strangers who allow me a glimpse into their own lives and the struggles and questions they face on a daily basis. And without question, it makes me feel normal and universal and it lightens what can be a very overwhelming task. Reading someone else's post can sometimes lighten the feeling that what I struggle with is small and insignificant.
I suppose, for me, it's the same feeling I get from hearing a song that speaks to me or reading a story or poem that gets inside me and stays there. In the end, we all want to hear someone else sing our song. And we want to know that ours was heard and that it mattered to someone else.
I have chosen to do Facebook a little differently. I have included family, colleagues and old acquaintances from high school and have limited myself to a certain degree in what I post or how I present myself. Having friends and family scattered across 5 continents, I've found that it's a nice way to sort of passively be connected with people who I don't want to lose but may not have the time to actively keep up with. They get the cleaned up version of Shannon. But lucky you, Jubyred reader. You get more than just being ambiently aware. Admittedly, it's more for me than you. So thanks for reading.
