There Is A Season

Something has changed for me in the last couple months.  Somehow I have taken on the adjective "blogger" as part of my life descriptor.  Obviously, I have been tending this little blog for several years now.  However, it was a little like when I first had Soren.  I only thought of myself as a young wife who happened to have a baby.  Somewhere along the line I actually became A MOM (I know, major life adjustment!).  I am okay with being a mom.  In fact, I absolutely love being the mother of Soren, Elliot, and Penelope.  I have embraced it completely (mini-van, sneakers and all).  

However, something in the last couple months threw me over that threshold from "happens to keep a blog" to "is a blogger."  For some odd reason, this title is really uncomfortable for me.  I do not want to be "a blogger."  Perhaps it was taking that leap into hosting my own blog carnival.  BLOG CARNIVAL?!  Who even understands these terms in the real world?  I do not want to have to wonder if someone in my real community has already read my blog.  It puts me in a catch-22.  Do I assume they have (which feels so arrogant)?  Do I ask (which seems like self-promotion)?  Do I assume they have not and risk boring them with redundant information (and will they be offended if parts of the conversation are verbatim from the blog post)?  It is strange.

I feel utterly detached from this blog.  I feel miles away from the reasons I even started keeping a blog.  I feel like maybe I am done "attempting transparency" online.  In some ways, any attempt at such a thing online was bound to fail.  In some ways, I hope, I achieved it as best I could.  However, what keeping this blog really did was to provide community for me at a time I was desperately without it.  When I moved back "home" to Eugene, I returned to real community.  The kind of community you can barbecue with, share real life with, and never exhaust the conversation.  There was a large separation between me and this blog once I moved.  It seemed a funny accessory that I just kept wearing out of habit, but not of love.

Now, I am ready for a different adventure.  Of course, I do plan to still be learning (ancora imparo).  I am approaching thirty years old next month, and I feel like I have more to learn than I ever have in my life.  From what I can tell, that is a good thing.  From what I have heard, that feeling will only increase.  That is strangely encouraging, while it is also a little frustrating.  I can still remember being in 6th grade and over-hearing my mother tell someone I was "11 going on 30."  That diagnosis stuck with me.  "Thirty" held the secrets of being undeniably grown-up, fully-mature.  It also put me on a path (created only by myself and my 11-year-old conceptions of what maturity even meant) of trying to continue "being mature."  I do not think this is a bad path.  It is still the path I want to travel.  However, now I am 29 going on 30.  Now I am right where I am supposed to be.  Soon, I will be 30, and on what will I be going then?  No one has dared to prognosticate for me from here.  Thirty is wide open to me.  Life, moment by moment, is on what I am going.  The same as you.  The same as I have always been.   Yet now I feel it more acutely.  I feel its fragility, its beauty, its brevity, its frivolity and meaninglessness, and yet I feel its possibility.  I feel possibilities that are not foreseeable 19 years on the horizon.  Perhaps now I will be 30 going on 11.  Perhaps I have much more to learn about childhood from watching my own children discover theirs.

I am ready to walk into my thirtieth year while still attempting transparency, but attempting it with the people with whom I am in true community.  This blog will fall silent.  In fact, I will even be making it private (for I cannot bring myself to simply delete it).  I do not plan on posting here, so the privacy is not to hide anything.  In the event that I change my mind, or life sends me different circumstances where I need blogging as a form of community, I might start up again.  If you would like to be on the email list for when/if that happens, shoot me and email or leave me a comment with your email address.  

I am not yet ready to close my seldom-posted-on writing blog, nor my food blog, so you might still find me there.  I would also like to leave Facebook, but it is so darn convenient to get in touch with people there.  I am undecided.   I am also undecided about how much I will follow others' blogs, so if you share any major life updates I should know about, please let me know by email!

To my friends and family (many of whom are, sadly, not a part of our physical community here) - I imagine I will start some sort of family blog devoted solely to pictures and antics of the kids and our adventures.  If you want to be emailed when I post/start that, let me know.

To everyone else - Thank you for being a very meaningful community to me here for as long as you have.  I have treasured every interaction.  You have meant a lot to me and helped me through more than you could know.

Carpe Vitam!!

(seize the life)

[Blog scheduled to go private in a few weeks.  My hope is to give time for occasional readers not to be taken completely by surprise]