Leaving a Footprint Behind

“This blog is about leaving my footprint behind when I go. It's also about finding out who I am now, even if it's a different person each day. It's about thinking, feeling, learning and changing - and about laughing too, I hope; and it's about filling my life with new people and making each new day interesting.”

I found this statement about blogging as I was surfing around one afternoon and I copied and pasted it, wishing I had written it myself because it said so perfectly how I feel about blogging. Then the doorbell rang, I hit the wrong key and promptly lost my connection and by the time I returned to my computer I was unable to return to the blog where I had found it – the big frustration of the day.

I am not claiming in any way that these are my words, but they did make me think about what it’s like to be able to leave that “footprint” behind – so much better than a diary because this is shared with other people. It’s a way for me to leave a kind of legacy to my children. It has become, for me, a new way to learn about myself, to explore places within me that I would have been afraid to see in earlier stages of my life. It has helped me realize that in many ways I am a different person each day. I am learning more each day, not only about myself, but about others and how we interact, how we manage to touch those similar strings in the instruments of our lives and enjoy the music that we create together. And it is about laughter, joy, being able to see the beauty in our world, as well as in the those who inhabit our world, those that add to our joy and our laughter.

It offers each of us the opportunity to reach out, to meet others, to exchange thoughts and ideas and laughter. It helps us to see our many similarities with others as well as helping to define our differences with others, but whatever, we never come away empty handed.

So, to whomever wrote this, I say thank you. You have helped me to define the pleasure and excitement and the sense of fulfillment that blogging has brought into my life. And I’m also glad that it has come to me at this stage of life as I have such a rich tapestry to explore and to enjoy.

Starting Over

Please bear with me for a bit, having to start from scratch is really the pits, but hopefully over the next few days I can get it all back at least pretty much as it was. Thanks to all the people that have been so helpful in getting the word out about my blogging disaster. Still don't know for sure what caused it -- my old blog is still available to all, I just can't add anything to it. So, I got as close as I could with this one, but as I said, it's going to take some time and my next few days were already pretty filled up with stuff to do and I'm still feeling pretty frustrated and generally pissed off, but what do you do? Sit down and cry or get a new one up and running as quickly as possible. This has been far too much fun, has brought so much pleasure, so many new friends -- it's worth the effort.

Now, back to work!