Musings on a year gone by.

So I guess today is an anniversary of sorts. One year ago today I started this blog. So as I sit here at work reflecting on what I guess was a year of growing, learning and adapting to this type of online life, I am also thinking about where it will go from here.

I have, during the past year, realized with wide-eyed-wonder that I honestly feel that this online record of my doings could be more private than a written journal - a slap in the face to the notion that the WWW is in every respect public domain. I forced myself to make this blog public. Just because I needed to ensure that I thought about what I wrote and how I wrote it. I wanted to learn from it, and I have, but not necessarily what I thought I would.

I have returned to previous posts in order to put a date to certain events that have occurred. I have referred to my previous posts to find links that I posted for safe keeping. I have reread my entire blog once just to see who it is that I am online. I have started to notice that I do indeed have some sort of a personal style. I have also realized that I rarely post about what truly troubles me, what truly scares me and what truly hurts me, nor do I speak about personal feelings when those feelings are raw. I have also realized that even though I feel that my online life is more private than a written journal may be, I am not fool enough to think that using my blog in that way would, if read by anyone in my family or by my friends, be taken in the context in which it was meant. That said, when I stumbled into blogging, I must have known somehow that I was never going to be writing about my private life or feelings, because I can say that looking back there is very little on my blog that I couldn't have a family member or friend read. Funny then, that I go out of my way to make sure that I don't encourage people I know to stop by here. As the people I already know have never understood who I need to be, I don’t feel the need to share with them the inner workings of a person they already don’t understand.

All in all, blogging has made me realize that I need to be part of a community. Of all the things I have learned from blogging THAT is my reluctant acknowledgement to myself.

I always did feel somewhat on the fringe of every social situation. Don’t get me wrong. I can socialize with the best of ‘em. And I do. It’s just that in all my life I have never met anyone like myself. I do not have any friends who ache to create, and that saddens me, makes me feel lost at times.

I don’t mean to say that I don’t have talented and wonderful friends, I do, my husband among them. It’s just that I know of no one that I can sit down and talk to about how wonderful I feel sitting in a cramped ‘craft room’ up til all hours of the night threading little beads the size of dust particles onto wire the thickness of sewing thread, or unknotting a myriad of colourful yarns as I knit a swatch for perhaps the 20th time just to see how a group of colours ‘plays’ with each other, or for that matter how I feel that I am not alone in this world when I react to the “eureka” moment of a stranger when she blogs about how satisfied she felt when she finally got that zipper to sit right after making a million pouches, or better yet, how I feel when I turn on my computer in the morning to catch up on my regular reads and discover that one of my favourite bloggers has finished that difficult sweater she has been sweating over and I jump for joy with her, I have no one to share THAT feeling with.

Except you, the person who has found your way here and might even decide to return here and may even care about what happens here. ‘Cause you understand, you do it too. And I guess that in your own way, you find the same solace here, online, that I do. Inside, I’ve known it and now, after a year, I can say that I acknowledge it. And that I am actually OK with that. I sought it out and I am not so miserable about it anymore. Because, after reflecting on what blogging is to me, I can say, it is my muse. I have a presence here, I can BE here. Like minded people come to visit once and a while and sometimes they even drop me a line. And because of this blog, I create. This has been one of the most creative years of my life and my blog is the driving force.

They have a life of their own now, my creativity and my blog (their dependence on one another notwithstanding). I find I look around me in the mornings to find things I have created, things I want to make or things to inspire me – just to feed my blog. Or is it my creativity? Like I said, it is my driving force and I don’t want it to die.

Happy anniversary blog and creative continuity alike! I hope you are both here to stay.