Together on Tuesday

Today, I'm starting something new-it's called "Together on Tuesdays."  Before I explain what it's all about though, I need to give a brief overview of how and why this blog got started, and what I hope it becomes. I originally started writing this blog so I could express my thoughts in an adult fashion, and practice my writing skills.  I am a stay at home mom.  My kids are five and two, and sometimes I feel like I can't put two thoughts together.  My husband travels a lot, and most of the time it's just the kids and me on our own.  This leaves me with very little adult interaction.  I needed an outlet, and I felt that I also needed to keep my writing skills sharp, so I decided to blog.


I don't know if I really thought people would read my blog or not.  I guess deep down, I wanted to believe I had a few faithful followers, but I wasn't not sure how much of my personal life I wanted to expose to complete strangers.  After I started this blog, I received a couple of spam emails and some interesting comments from strangers.  This creeped me out a little bit, and I felt it was my responsibility as a wife and mother to take into consideration the fact that I'm not only exposing my life, and images to the world wide web community, but that of my family as well.  So, I decided to put a few security measures up on my blog.  Once I did all of that,  I felt like no one out there was reading my blog-which sort of made this whole endeavor seem a little vain.  Then, I started receiving emails from my friends stating they were still reading, but just didn't comment because of the need to log in to comment.  I was inspired to write once again.  Don't worry-I will get to the "Together" part of this Tuesday entry at some point, I promise. 


I wrote a couple of initial posts, and quickly realized once I spouted off a few rants and things I needed to get off of my chest, I didn't have a whole lot to say. I should say, I wasn't sure how to direct my thoughts. The blog ended up becoming only a sort of show and tell about what crochet or craft project I recently completed because I found it easier to post a picture and write a a quick caption than to write about my actual thoughts and feelings. This was not the original plan for this blog. There are events that come across the news, and things that happen in my life on a daily basis that I would love to share with an adult, but when it comes to the end of the day, I find my brain is pudding. Quite simply, I'm exhausted, and the last thing I want to do is sit at the computer to write about my thoughts.   So perhaps I need to rethink my blog title, (think: "in mom's spare time" or "in a mommy minute") but that's a different discussion for a different day. 


One day, I expressed my concerns about blogging to one of my dearest friends, and avid blogger, Danielle over at "My Peaches and Cream".  She said she often finds herself in the same writing rut (which is really hard for me to believe because if you have ever read her blog, she seems to have no trouble finding things to write about, and is a wonderful writer in my opinion).  That being said, sometimes inspiring material motivation can be issue for anyone, and we felt linking up on Tuesdays, and writing our thoughts about random subjects would be a nice way to stay motivated to write.  We are each other's cheerleaders...uh, but don't even think about giving us pom poms because we just aren't those kinds of girls.  It's a nice way to know that someone is out there, someone is reading, and someone cares about what you are writing. It's also an effective way to be held accountable to write. So what does the future hold for this blog and "Together on Tuesdays?"


Well, Danielle posed some interesting questions about what blogging means for me, and where I want this blog to go. I have been thinking about that a lot lately.  I'm a member of a mom's group at my church, and we are reading a book together in the group.  One chapter was devoted to parenting and the Internet.  It suggested starting a blog to help keep a living journal of your family's experiences.  While I feel that is a fantastic idea, I'm not sure I'm quite ready for that.  I started a blog similar to that after my son was born. It was pictures and stories about events that were happening in our life.  The main purpose of the blog was to keep out of town family updated on how my son was growing in each and every way.  After a while, I let that blog fall to the way side because I was a little bit concerned with who was reading the blog, and if it was "safe" for me to put his image out there.  Also-it was extremely time consuming to upload photos and videos and write captions about each one.  I still love the idea of documenting our lives in a journal type aspect, but I find it a little daunting as well.  So, this blog will never be intended for that use.  I wanted and still do want this blog to be mine.  A place I can go to for my thoughts, opinions, reflections, dreams, desires, and yes,to sometimes show off things that I have created that I am proud of-ie. crochet, crafting, or what have you. That's what you will find here. 

 As for the "Together on Tuesday" posts, we will be exploring all kinds of topics.  They could be very specific or really generic.  We want to hear any comments you as the reader might have, or if you would like to link up, we would love to read your thoughts as well.  Now it's time to wrap up this monstrosity of a post and enjoy some of this beautiful weather with my kiddos-before they destroy the house. Don't forget to check out what Danielle at "My Peaches and Cream"  has to say about her thoughts on "Together on Tuesday."