Last night, I watched/listened/attended the class by Ali Edwards on Storyology. This class is aimed at helping scrapbookers add words to their layouts and whilst I don’t (yet) really scrapbook, I was interested since it focused on lifting the barriers to writing our stories and helped energise and inspire me with my blogging. There were incredibly helpful techniques to get writing and ways to share a story in simple ways.

It clarified for me that I want to create a document – whether that be online or on paper someday – that can tell Evelina about her mama and about how amazing it is for us to have her around. I want to record old memories before they fade. I want to capture life as it is right now, including the day-to-day as while this might be mundane right now, it is something that might be able to build a fuller picture for the person reading in the future.

One of the writing prompt exercises in the class asked why do I tell stories. I wrote:

I journal because I want to share my thoughts and experiences with friends, family and anyone who would like to hear. I would like to remember how life is at any given time or how I am feeling.

I want a record for my daughter and family to read in years to come. I want to capture my happiness, my trials, my likes and dislikes. I want to record the ever-changing stages of development in my daughter’s life before I forget. The daily minutiae that fades – I want that to be remembered.

I would love to have this kind of record of my life. My mother did not keep a journal and I would love to know how she felt when she had my brother and me. What her everyday life was like. All the things that have faded in her memory.

I write because I want to work through my feelings, thoughts and I want to explore them.

Having felt all energised about digging into the stories of my life, as opposed to the blog posts of my life, I hit a brick wall this morning. Where would I record these? Having just going through the process of reducing my blogging commitments, I didn’t want to start yet another blog. But using an online source which I can access from around the house and elsewhere definitely suits me. I had just got happy with my Five Horizons – am I doubting the purpose and point of blogging about simplifying my life or writing brief book reviews? I had already had a boost of confidence in my little corner of the internet with my blog poll which helped me decide the fate of my mama blog. Did I really want to mess with this blog again so soon?

And yet, I feel like I have been wanting a change not particularly in the subject matter of my blogging but in the manner in which I blog. My favourite blog posts that I read around the internet tell a story. This is something I have drifted away from – my posts are snapshots but in themselves they don’t tell a lot about what I am doing or what I am thinking.

This rather circular blog post is not really going anywhere since I have not really decided how I am going to get these stories down. I think that some might appear here. Ones that I don’t feel comfortable sharing with all and sundry might be printed and put in a journal – a scrapbook of sorts with words and pictures but with minimal embellishments. I don’t have the time, budget or willpower to avoid the amazing stamps and embellishments that are available so I need to steer well clear!

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