Since my Joe The Plumber post, I’ve been thinking more about what my blog is and why I write it. Some folks felt taken aback at coming to my blog, expecting to see Clara sitting on a pumpkin, and instead seeing a post talking about my political beliefs and which may have expressed an opinion that was completely at odds with their own.
Attention was brought to the fact that this blog has focused more on Clara for the last two years and I have a separate “writing” blog, TheJoyOfWAHMing, where I’ve done more lengthy posts ranting about my opinion on things. However, ThisJoy’sLife is really about just that – my life – and though Clara is a huge part of it, she is not all that I am.
I started this blog when Chad and I were living in Ireland as an easy way to keep my friends and family in touch with the adventures we were having. I starting writing stories and found I really enjoyed it. Once I got back to the states and we had Clara I found this blog was an excellent way to keep my friends and family in Georgia involved in the day-to-day that is our lives out here in the Pacific Northwest. But, I found that I missed the writing and I wanted to go back to that form of expressing myself. In fact, I found I needed it. It was a way for me to be ME and not “Clara’s mom” at the end of each day. I created TheJoyOfWAHM-ing for that purpose, but what I’m now realizing is that I’m at a place in my life, two and a half years into Clara’s, that I no longer need to separate MYSELF and CLARA’S MOM. We are one and the same.
During one of my “joe the plumber” talks, a friend noted that my blog was a “living” document. I think she is right. It lives and breathes right along with me and is a reflection of how I have grown and changed over the last few years. Though some may not like it, it will continue to do that, as I am a blogger. And, right now, the discussion I’m interested in is why I blog.
Chad pointed me to that “Why I Blog” article by the Atlantic’s Senior Editor Adrew Sullivan and I have found much food for thought there. I also thank dooce for highlighting this excerpt from author John Scalzi in a recent post:
The reader who believes a fiction author should keep his or her opinions to themselves is effectively (if generally unintentionally) saying “You exist only to amuse me. You are not allowed to do anything else.” To which the only rational response is: blow me. I’m not going to hesitate to add my voice to the national dialogue on any subject just because someone somewhere might not be happy with what I have to say. And more to the point, I think it is bad and dangerous thinking for people to suggest that fiction writers should have to live in a black box of opinion. The idea that writing fiction somehow obliges or even just encourages a vow of silence on any subject, politics or otherwise, that might offend someone somewhere, is flatly odious.
So, get ready folks, because I may be mixing it up a bit in the future and you may be surprised at what you find when (and if) you come back to visit This Joy’s Life!
