Dear Reader and dear Me,
I've just officially researched a piece of information that will keep me in the ballgame of blogging... but let me start at the beginning.
Last year, when I began blogging, it was part of a funny sort of Mukono-group-narrative... there was a woman (now friend) who was going to move to Uganda and she was a daily blogger recounting all the preparations and realities of leaving the US with her family and settling in Mukono as a missionary family. There was an English woman (my good friend) who was leaving Mukono after 8 years of being here (and another decade or so of being in Africa); she was moving "back home" with her family and began a blog about being a "returnee" in the motherland. :) And my other friend was spending her last year in Mukono, preparing for her move back to the US and wanted to document the "comings and goings", what it is like to be part of two worlds.
Enter Abby: By personality, every day of life involves the question "what's the meaning of life for me today, personally and in the cosmic sense?" And while, I would love to know the writing on the wall as to what is home and what the plan is for us, I have seen the "blog" as a place to begin to record what life is like as a mother, as a woman who is away from home culture, as a woman who is raising her family in what they consider their "homeland", as a friend who has many friends coming and going, as a Christian who is accepting that life is more pilgrimage than destination, as a melancholy who will always have some angst about decisions, about values, and living it out and accepting limitations, and wanting to always learn and be open to the mysteries...
Enter Pragmatic Abby: Who is my audience? Though i like facebook for briefer greetings, photos, articles, etc, I liked the idea of blogging to get a bit more content about life out to my family and friends. It's still not as personal as an email, but it does give a chance for me to share slices of our life. But, today, i discovered what I assumed was true and adds a whole new dimension--- I can publish the blog. Now, this is not for anyone else's sake but it is a bit like "journaling", record-keeping, photo-albuming, etc... This definitely adds a final straw to my motivation and discipline in regards to this blogging project.
I'm including this blog entry because I do think some of my other blogging co-hort :), might also be interested in the idea of publishing the record-keeping of the last year. I'm thinking I might just do it once a year and have a sort of collection of them.
This brings me to a moment of thanksgiving-- to my mother and mother-in-law and to technology. :)
This summer when we were home, Mark's mom gave him an album of the first 18 years of his life--a project that I'm sure took hours and hours of culling, decision-making, crafting and commitment. And I remember those bookshelves in our house growing up where my mom had leather albums of all our years growing up, our trip west, etc, etc. And I remember the years of mom's love of the "panoramic" camera and "photo depot" trips and albums full. My mom has always had little albums stacked up around our house and our life--markers of time and relationships and journeys.
I feel remiss that the computer and digital age has sort of given us so much that we don't always publish it and the kids don't always get to see all that we've collected. But now, I feel that this "publishing" and also the printing of photo albums is technology's compensation for the ridiculous amount of photos we have stored on our computers, etc.
So, there you have it-- for this soul who is always counting her energy/time in terms of "investment"--I think the blog has officially entered into the "its worth it" category.
I've just officially researched a piece of information that will keep me in the ballgame of blogging... but let me start at the beginning.
Last year, when I began blogging, it was part of a funny sort of Mukono-group-narrative... there was a woman (now friend) who was going to move to Uganda and she was a daily blogger recounting all the preparations and realities of leaving the US with her family and settling in Mukono as a missionary family. There was an English woman (my good friend) who was leaving Mukono after 8 years of being here (and another decade or so of being in Africa); she was moving "back home" with her family and began a blog about being a "returnee" in the motherland. :) And my other friend was spending her last year in Mukono, preparing for her move back to the US and wanted to document the "comings and goings", what it is like to be part of two worlds.
Enter Abby: By personality, every day of life involves the question "what's the meaning of life for me today, personally and in the cosmic sense?" And while, I would love to know the writing on the wall as to what is home and what the plan is for us, I have seen the "blog" as a place to begin to record what life is like as a mother, as a woman who is away from home culture, as a woman who is raising her family in what they consider their "homeland", as a friend who has many friends coming and going, as a Christian who is accepting that life is more pilgrimage than destination, as a melancholy who will always have some angst about decisions, about values, and living it out and accepting limitations, and wanting to always learn and be open to the mysteries...
Enter Pragmatic Abby: Who is my audience? Though i like facebook for briefer greetings, photos, articles, etc, I liked the idea of blogging to get a bit more content about life out to my family and friends. It's still not as personal as an email, but it does give a chance for me to share slices of our life. But, today, i discovered what I assumed was true and adds a whole new dimension--- I can publish the blog. Now, this is not for anyone else's sake but it is a bit like "journaling", record-keeping, photo-albuming, etc... This definitely adds a final straw to my motivation and discipline in regards to this blogging project.
I'm including this blog entry because I do think some of my other blogging co-hort :), might also be interested in the idea of publishing the record-keeping of the last year. I'm thinking I might just do it once a year and have a sort of collection of them.
This brings me to a moment of thanksgiving-- to my mother and mother-in-law and to technology. :)
This summer when we were home, Mark's mom gave him an album of the first 18 years of his life--a project that I'm sure took hours and hours of culling, decision-making, crafting and commitment. And I remember those bookshelves in our house growing up where my mom had leather albums of all our years growing up, our trip west, etc, etc. And I remember the years of mom's love of the "panoramic" camera and "photo depot" trips and albums full. My mom has always had little albums stacked up around our house and our life--markers of time and relationships and journeys.
I feel remiss that the computer and digital age has sort of given us so much that we don't always publish it and the kids don't always get to see all that we've collected. But now, I feel that this "publishing" and also the printing of photo albums is technology's compensation for the ridiculous amount of photos we have stored on our computers, etc.
So, there you have it-- for this soul who is always counting her energy/time in terms of "investment"--I think the blog has officially entered into the "its worth it" category.
So I feel rather ignorant and a tad ashamed posting this comment as someone who considers herself a die-hard blogger... :) I ought to know, about blog publishing, right?? But I will swallow that pride, because I MUST KNOW!!! I have ideas in my head, but the reality of publishing a blog has eluded me somehow. So... topic of conversation for future early morning walk: Blog Publishing...
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