A number of years ago after meeting with a student, they left behind a post-it note saying "Find Dr Ruth". For whatever reason, I liked it. I stuck it on my computer monitor and the note survived an office move and many semesters, succumbing finally to a flood from a misfastened condenser in a lab on the floor above me. I hadn't realized how much I missed that post-it note, until I was wondering what to call this blog and it's image popped into my head. I resisted. It seems trite and self-indulgent; but isn't a personal blog the ultimate in self-indulgence... This is a place I hope I can use to help myself (and anyone else, though I'm not sure why) find stuff I've posted elsewhere, or stuff I want to remember but never know where to put. I'm a packrat, so this is a way to spread my collecting out into another dimension. But this blog may also be a way to help me find myself, which has been an ongoing process particularly in the last few years for reasons some of you know and I feel no need to elaborate on at the moment.
I write a lot, particularly on my AustinMamas mailing list and its subsidiaries. Thanks to gmail, it's much easier to go back and find what I'd written before, but rather than cut and paste to reshare that goodness, I'd much rather direct people to one resting place. I've been doing a lot more writing lately. In particular, I've been scattering recipes hither and thither – on our mamawiki, the blog of the wonderful vegan food co-op that let me come play earlier this summer, and now our own FoodieMamas food co-op that has formed, as several of my friends took the leap of faith and joined me in that grand adventure. I've already got a recipe or two I've wanted to share to various venues - friends, family, facebook, but also to scientists. I didn't really want to send them to our co-op blog - this is one case where I wanted the stuff on MY blog.
My need for a blog has been accumulating for years. I've started several in the past, with the best of intentions, with the purpose of letting my family and friends keep up with the happenings of my kids, but never really succeeded with that. Much to my dismay. I'm sorry to have not done that. I've been recently encouraged by a number of different people from a number of different parts of my life to have a blog; most of them not knowing this was an idea that's been percolating around in my head forever.
What shall I be posting? Food stuff. Parenting stuff. Science stuff. Music stuff. Kids stuff. Reading. Movies. Random things I want to remember or share. A large intersection of many of my worlds, but maybe no one sees all that I do in one place, other than me. I am verbose, as you'll learn. I write really long run-on sentences, boldly split infinitives, use too many commas, ellipses, parenthetical remarks and asides, and exclamation points! But I will also do driveby posts probably mostly connected to photos I've taken of stuff my kids do. This blog will be a mishmash of my life. Mostly disjointed. Full of joy.
So here we are. Started at the precipice of a new semester, with a huge to-do list looming large, when I really should be creating my new syllabus. But what's new about that? I'm learning to accept that this is how I work, despite how much I think I should change. I'm getting older, and I've lived this long this way, thriving on the adrenalin and creating best on little sleep, good food, and the kisses of my kids. I don't have time to do this, and yet I feel I must. Let's see how it goes.
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I held up publishing this for a day, because there is a perfect photograph I wanted to use. And I can't find it. It's not digital. There is a space in the photo album where it once lived. Clearly I thought it was perfect for some other long forgotten project and neglected to return it to its proper resting place. I will hunt it down and post it. But I can't hold this blog back for another minute. Here we go!!
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