Blogging ad infinitum

In 2006, my daughter was 1. That first year was so full of everything new: new feelings (both good and awful -hello, postpartum loveliness), milestones, joy, challenge, humor...I made some lame attempts to record what was going on in a journal, but I always felt like the richness of that year was lost forever. Sure, I had plenty of pictures (digital camera + first baby = photojournalism insanity).  But, it didn't seem quite nearly enough.

I  soon thereafter discovered blogs, well, mommy blogs (as unappealing as that phrase is to me), and realized what I had been missing. Here it was, the richness. I particularly recall coming across Dooce's blog and being captivated/jealous/inspired by her monthly letters to her daughter which captured the essence of that month in her daughter's development.

I want to do that, I thought.

So, I started a personal blog, mainly intended to be devoted to my daughter. I wanted our family and friends to know about what she was doing, learning. And, I wanted to write (again). I (also) started a monthly tribute to my daughter on my blog, but instead of a letter, I decided I would post her developments in the form of a software update, complete with new features and known operating failures: Version 14.0 was the first release.

At first, the only people who knew about my blog were my husband (who would always be the first to read my posts no matter what) and a few friends and family. I soon discovered a whole community of supportive bloggers whose writing I admired - I'd post comments on their blogs and they would on mine. It was like having a cheerleading section with you - along for the ups and downs on your life ride.

Pretty soon, I was writing on a regional moms blog, freelance writing a blog for Disney (long story, but short version: they found my personal blog and asked me to write for them), and blogging was suddenly a very big part of my life. My husband has always been my number one reader-fan and despite my writing for multiple outlets, always made sure to read my posts and murmur supportive things about them. He sometimes would half-joke that everything - every funny conversation we had -might make it onto the blog. I tried to be sensitive about that since he's more of a private person than me. He once actually guest-wrote about what it was like being the husband of a blogger (me) on one of the blogs I was writing for. I loved reading his perspective.

My family knows about my blogging (even though it still weirds me out when I can see that my retired Dad has refreshed my blog page 20 times or more in one day) and my co-workers. In fact, a whole lot of people who know me know, apparently, sometimes catching me off guard. Mothers of friends have mentioned certain posts to me, and the other day, a former intern of mine stopped by my office to talk about a mutual patient when he mentioned HE was reading Momicillin and wanted to congratulate me on my pregnancy. (In my mind, I manually closed my jaw with my hand. In real life, I smiled back and said, "Thank you!!!")

Over time, I've tended to mask the identity of my family more and more while unmasking my own- I guess I'm making it more about me than about them which I think has more to do with giving them more privacy and exposing myself than about narcissism. (Hopefully.) Personally, I have come to believe in taking ownership for my words and my thoughts and standing behind them, for better or worse.

Blogging invaded my academic life and I started using private blogs for reflective writing with medical students and in 2008, this blog was born. I've had to give up some of the other blogging gigs along the way, but this blog, with its community of readers, with its writers, with its stories, is still one of my proudest bullets on my CV. I owe MiM for producing some of my most valued IRL friendships. These women I write with here are simply amazing.

And the versions? They continued  on until Version 42.0 when I thought my daughter was getting old enough that it was becoming less my stories to tell in so much detail. Like Fizzy, I went back and published all of those old posts in a book, to give to her eventually. Now, I'm up to Version 33.0 XY for my son (although these have become far more sporadic like hers did at the end and plan to publish his own book of posts one day. In a few months, I guess I'll be starting all over at Version 1.0 XY(2)...and so it goes.