So why a blog?…revisited

5579 days ago I opened up a Blogger account and started writing; a touch over 15 years if you’re not up to thinking today. A lifetime ago, literally. The boys are no longer a preschooler and toddler but a college student and high school junior. They’re still amazing young men and lord love a duck I wish I could share more of their stories here, but as they’ve gotten older I’ve gotten more protective of their privacy.

I started writing what eventually became Laughing at Chaos because it seemed fun, and it became so much more for me. Over the years I’ve shared the time I was involved in a one-cow stampede, thumb-typed on my husband’s work Blackberry our middle of the night escapade to watch a shuttle launch that was scrubbed, and have shaken my fist at the year more than once. My little writing project here became more and more focused on giftedness and twice-exceptionality, and sharing those stories, the good and the bad, was cathartic. There was the time Andy tried to order a Pancake Puff pan in the wee hours while we slept, my bellowing reply to an ignorant Baby Center post on bragging about gifted kids, and I’ll never forget sobbing while writing Gifted Is. I’m proud of so many posts here, and given that Impostor Syndrome is imbedded in my DNA, that’s not easy for me to admit.

So why a blog now? My life is vastly different than it was in 2006. Hell, it’s vastly different compared to 15 months ago, much less years. A global pandemic will do that. But I digress. I started off sharing random thoughts about life which grew into G2e writing and advocacy which slid into “I can’t really share their stories because they’re teens now and they’re not mine to tell” and then kinda petered out into holy crap the world is a giant tire fire and getting worse and then just…stopped. I lost the fun. And when I lost the fun I lost the words and while I call it creative hibernation, let’s be honest, it was extreme writer’s block. Extreme writer’s block exacerbated by all the things I can’t write about because this blog hasn’t been anonymous for a long time. Wanna know how I feel about teaching through a pandemic, or raising gifted and eternally complex young adults, or living as the gooey center of the sandwich generation, or current events, or having racist relatives, or The Great Pumpkin? We’ll have to meet in person (if we can ever do that again) and share a couple bottles of wine. Maybe some tapas. Because I cannot write about those things right now for reasons. Except The Great Pumpkin. That falls under “you do you, Boo.”

Last week I was digging around in one of my many online storage services and stumbled across some short stories. I was at the end of one before I realized that it was something I’d started writing for NaNoWriMo 2019. I’d forgotten the storyline, forgotten I’d written and stashed it, and then forgot where it was when I went back looking for it. Pandemic stress brain is real, yo. But…and please remember that this is hard to admit…it was really good. It lit up my word pleasure centers, little lights blinking as the system sputtered back to life. And so here I am.

I know that practice makes better and that discipline > motivation. I also know that no amount of discipline and practice can make the words come when I’m struggling through Life 2021. Like trying to tango through molasses, bound and gagged and blindfolded. But I’ve written this. And hopefully it’s primed the word pump enough that I can write something again in a day or so. The short stories I started in November 2019? I will read and reread them, flesh them out, and play with them over the summer.

So why a blog?

Because I love it.