Blog: Journal or Exhibition?

Everyone on the net lately seems to be scarce, including myself. Could be the nicer weather, the ability to be outside longer, to grill, to run and play... To do things other than sit on the computer, essentially :) But for me, it's not just that... Lately I've been struggling with what I want this blog to be. What voice do I want to use? Where am I coming from? Who is reading me? Is this my journal, or is it a place for voyeurs to come and observe my life?

These are questions that have sort of stopped me in my tracks with the blog, and I hate that, because I love blogging. I hate not knowing where it's going, or what I want it to mean. Originally, when I started this blog, it was sort of as my own journal, but more than that, a record for Ilyana of her life, what we did, how much we loved her, and what she was like as a little girl.

Once I started with this, I loved it. I still do. I'm just dumbfounded as to... well, my mind is saying "What now?" because I started this blog with one intention, but then I realized there is this whole WORLD of people out there, blogging about their lives, about current events, about politics, about food, about money... There is this whole community that I have gotten involved in and begun to really enjoy. My presence on other people's sites has drawn them here, and for me... That's sort of blurred the line of my intent for this space.

I mean, if other people are coming here and reading it, is the blog now more about me than Ilyana? I started doing memes and things like that for a while, because I saw other people doing it, and I figured it was a way for me to involve myself more in this community... But soon realized that most of those don't really fit in with my vision of what the meaning of this space was for me and my family... And that most of the family members I have who read this probably don't care as much about the silly little mundane surveys and when I am "tagged" with awards, etc.

So then I began wondering if I should address this more directly to Illy, more like a journal or letters to her, more back to the roots of what I had envisioned. But I waffle back and forth on this too, feeling like if I do that, it shuts everyone else out- and since I love this community so much, I wouldn't want to do that. I appreciate it when other people visit us here, I appreciate when they are interested in our lives and want to know what we're doing, want to engage in conversation over things that are relevant to my life.

Basically what I'm saying is that I haven't been on here as much recently because I'm struggling with my own intent, my own voice for this little ol' blog. I'm sure a lot of people go through this. I'm trying to get a grasp on where I want to be with this, and what it needs to mean to me. In the end, years down the line, am I going to care about the comments I received from people I don't know? Or am I going to care more that I kept a good record of what our lives were?

I'm definitely leaning more towards the latter... For me, this is about us. I love that I have made friends through this space (and yes, even though I haven't met most of you, considering that we allow each other to play peeping tom into our lives, and give each other advice, and support each other when we need it- yes, I do consider you all my friends in these ways) but that is sort of just a bonus.

When I think about this blog as something that other people will visit- when I write posts with the intent of being witty, or trying to seem too PC so that I won't be bashed by random blog-hoppers- I stump myself. I get into this funk where the words just won't come out. My thoughts flow more freely when I am speaking directly to my daughter, or to my family, or reflecting on my experiences without worry of the outside world. So I think that's what I'm going to try to do. I'm sorry if it seems to my blog friends that this is more boring, or that it's putting up a wall between my life and the rest of the internet, or that it's detaching myself from the community as a whole a bit more- that's not the intent. I just wouldn't want to give this up, and I've found that if I don't do it the way I'm most comfortable, I won't do it at all. I'll just keep wavering about what to write, and why, and why it's relevant... And it will never be honest, it will never be exactly what I had intended.

I feel like now I'm getting repetitive, so I'm just going to end here with a couple of quotes that I think are relevant to this struggle...

*****

"To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting." ~E.E. Cummings

"He who trims himself to suit everyone will soon whittle himself away." ~Raymond Hull