Why I love this bloggy caper!

Found here

Oh, my! What trouble I've been having with Feedburner and Google Reader deciding they didn't want to play together! You may have missed my giveaway post and Sunday Splendour so have a peek if you did. I'm hoping I've fixed the problem - I'll find out once I've published this ☺. Thanks for all your patience and understanding, you gorgeous souls. 

I also notice that quite a few of you have hopped aboard this planet recently (a warm welcome to you) so I think it’s timely to share a little bit about me and why I blog. I've interviewed myself (it felt a bit odd but I'll try anything once!). For the older Planetarians, some of this will be familiar but there are some newer thoughts, too. Okay, now settle down into a comfy chair with a glass of something yummy (mine’s some chilled riesling, of course!) and let’s start.

Why did I start blogging?

This is the photo from my first post – Alice stepping through the portal into another world

By July 2010, as a SAHM with 3 children under 5, Facebook had assumed an important role in my daily life, like a portal to connect with the ‘outside world’ of adults. However, it lacked the deeper level of connection with like-minded souls I was secretly yearning for. Catching up with old acquaintances was fine but I wanted more. I wanted to make new friends. I was also worried that I was forgetting so many precious childhood moments with the pixies. After seeing a blog mentioned on Facebook, I stumbled onto Blogger and hit ‘Create blog’. When prompted to name it, the title appeared to me in a flash. It was an expression I had been using for ages to describe the *completely parallel universe* I often felt I lived in as a mother. I was staggered no one else had nabbed it! My first post completely captured my feelings at the time. Oh, how glad I am that I clicked on those two magic words that day!

What makes me keep blogging?

I can’t imagine my life without blogging. Really, I can’t. It’s assumed a place and status in my life I could never have even dreamt of only 9 months ago. I think I was always destined to be a blogger, somehow. At school, I’d harboured aspirations of becoming a foreign correspondent but a week of work experience at the ABC in Grade 10 soon shattered those illusions! However, I still wanted an outlet to express my passionate love of words. I ‘fell into’ studying Arts/Law and practised as a solicitor for 10 years before Joshua was born. Words were my tools of trade and my weapons, even, in a courtroom.

With my arrival on Planet Baby, suddenly my hands became my tools of trade, with my words relegated to the spare room, lying there, unloved. 

But once I started blogging, once again I had an outlet to use my words. And they came a-tumbling, pouring out of my head in a torrent. What a blessed release!

Found here

What I hadn’t reckoned with was the extraordinary friendships I would soon form with gorgeous souls all over the globe. Merely through our exchange of words. Just extraordinary. Some of my blogging buddies know more about me than my closest friends. In fact, some of them now are amongst my closest friends. Even although we’ve never met in person. I think only bloggers really *get* me on this point. I’m sure you Planetarians know what I mean. My connecting with my bloggy friends regularly is essential for the smooth running of life on Planet Baby!

How do I find the inspiration to blog?

Oh, gosh, I am one of those bloggers who suffers from a surfeit of ideas! When I read my dear friend Bron’s post about losing her ‘blark’ (blogging spark!), I was just *fascinated* at how differently I felt about blogging. I sometimes wish I could lose my blark! As a busy Mum, I never have the time to write down all the posts in my head. I am constantly composing posts in my head. I’m no longer racing around scribbling down ideas on post-it notes like I was in the height of my *blogoholic days*.  But I still am in perpetual bloggy rehab! I have to keep an eye on myself, ensuring that my everyday life has precedence over Blogland. It’s a real balancing act for me as I *adore* the close connections I have with so many dear bloggy friends and it is so easy to while away hours blogging before noticing I have. I also find it quite therapeutic to get my thoughts in order by focusing on writing my posts. I think in that sense, blogging is helping me recover from my PND. I’m finding *Jane-the-person* again. I quite like her!

How do I overcome blogger's block?

Well, I just haven’t experienced it. I have 115 draft post titles just waiting to be written up. I kid you not. Most of them were written in my first few days of blogging, so pent-up were all those words! As many of you know, I also recently delighted in taking Holly Becker’s brilliant Blogging Your Way e-course and now have ideas coming out my ears ☺. I really can’t wait to find the time and the headspace to put all the ideas the course stimulated in me into action.

What's been my best blogging experience to date?

Now this one’s *so* tricky to answer. Really. I can’t choose. It’s a toss-up between these three:

*  Discovering the joy and the freedom of essentially publishing my own online magazine for free, at a time of my choosing, and then having kind-hearted souls the world over actually want to read what I have to say and even take the time and effort to comment on my little ponderings. It still astounds me daily;

* Developing an incredible kinship and deep and admiring friendship with sweet Felicity of Gifts of Serendipity. Finding her in the vast expanses of Blogland has been an incredible blessing for me; and

* Discovering my latent *creative side*. Encouraged by the beautiful inventiveness of gorgeous bloggers such as Tina of Rubies’ Place, I have been astounded to discover a wellspring of creativity inside me. Yes, little old me! This post about my Blogging Your Way mood board captures some of the emotions and experiences blogging has evoked for me. And this post showing how I created some Liberty loveliness the other day shows how far I’ve come since I started blogging – never in my wildest dreams would I have come up with this idea before blogging. I didn’t copy someone else’s idea – it was mine alone. And now I can’t wait to make some more!

So, lovely Planetarians, there you have it – some reasons why I love this bloggy caper so much. There are plenty more. Do any of them ring bells with you? Or have you found blogging an entirely different experience altogether? Jump in and share your thoughts so we can share some gorgeous blog love around!

PS Don't forget to enter my giveaway!

This post was rewound at Life in a Pink Fibro's Weekend Rewind on 14 May 2011.