Some Final Thoughts

If you have ever taken a Literature class in College you will remember hearing questions like...
"what do you think the author meant by this piece? " "What do you think motivated the author to use this phrase ?" Of course all answers are supposition unless somewhere the author wrote a very detailed explanation of his/her thoughts, motivation etc.

In a class of 100 students, you can come up with 100 different opinions and many of those opinions will be based on the personal experience of that moment in the students life. We like to relate things to our own experience, our own emotional situation, which is understandable, but doesn't always paint a very accurate picture of what the author was intending.

We color what we see with familiar crayons. We put ideas and thoughts of others into slots we can relate to and at times we do this subconsciously.

A commenter recently told me I was blogging for the wrong reason, which made me chuckle since I have never met this person, they have no experience of me sharing my motives of writing with them etc. I suspect there are maybe three people in the entire world who know why I write on this blog and that would be Emery, and my girls...we have discussed it and they know me well. But even at that, each day might bear a bit of a different approach to things.

With this blog, at times it feels as though 1,000 or more students are trying to dissect my words, find hidden meanings where there are none or read more into the words than are there.

There are some who even take my words personal, as if I am writing about them and their situation, which is amusing to me since I don't know but a handful of my readers at all. And they know me well enough to know I am not writing about them ! Its almost egotistical on the part of readers to think I am writing about them. It never is about any one in particular. If it was, I would probably link them in the entry.

Blogging has always been for me one main thing, my days thoughts. There has always been an agenda.... to have my readers think about things, to push women in particular to think deeply about their life and the meaning of life. To create a legacy that exists of something more than worry about orderly linen closets and pantries. I like orderly, but I sure don't want the conditions of my closets to define me. We are all so much more than that, we have so much more we can say and leave to our children. Blogging is an amazing opportunity to leave a legacy of our thoughts and beliefs to our children and grandchildren and generations beyond.

Three generations from now, I would like my descendants to know what I thought about, what was important to me, what my philosophy in life was. We all have thoughts and beliefs, and we can all write about them if we try. I don't want to leave my descendants simply instructions for decorating for fall or how to shop for food. I suspect they would want to know more than that about me. There can be a balance....I can leave that sort of information too, but I know in all honesty that if my mother and grandmother left journals, or blogs if they had been around, I would want to know what they thought about, what they felt in regard to raising their families. I would want to know what they believed about God. What sort of things did they wonder about. If they wrote about holiday preparations I would love that too, but together with the pieces of their thoughts and lives that made them who they really were, deep down.

Blogging caught me off guard in one respect, I wasn't prepared for the way it can drag you into a seat at the ego feast. First comes a stat counter or site meter so you can see how many people are visiting and as the numbers grow, you feel better. Next comes the worry over how many people are commenting. You compare how so and so got 67 comments on her brownie recipe and you got no comments on yours. (just an example folks ) Then come those cute little awards that you cherish and feel thankful for, but they too can become medals to boast about on the side bar. In no time at all the whole blog thing can become another tool we use to measure our success as a person, most often we look to those with greater success with a less than charitable heart, a big of jealousy perhaps. I am trying to get away from feeding my ego. Striving to be more humble. Being less of a show off. Blogging has not helped me in those areas !

And on a purely basic level, blogging and the computer are taking more of me than I need to give up to them. The computer is usually turned on before I dress in the morning and the last thing I do before going to bed. Checked several times during the day. I deserve more freedom.

No doubt I will be back to blogging after a while, with the hope that in this time of absence I learn to want less of it, maybe in this case the word is need and not want.

I also hope to see how idealistic it is for me to think anyone can blog with pure peace and harmony. To try to make every reader happy. To see that many if not all of the negative comments come from folks with issues I cannot relate to and that it is something far more personal for them than my words, that has spurred on their anger. I cannot keep people happy that are unhappy to begin with. I cannot expect people to see only my emphasis but to understand that each person interprets the written word in context to what is going on in their life or has gone on. It is our nature to do so.

So today is the beginning of my sabbatical of sorts. It feels good already.