A Whole Decade

I am a creature of habit.  Every week day I wake up and exercise.  I started running in college and still run.  After Joseph was born I added a strength-training routine to my workout and still do the exact same routine every Tuesday and Thursday.  We eat the same thing for breakfast every week day - oatmeal and eggs - and have been eating it since Brandon and I got married.  Every afternoon I take a nap and every evening I cook dinner at five, cooking the same twenty dinners over and over and over again.  I have kept a journal since I was eight, and with the exception of a four-year break at the beginning of my marriage, I write in it almost every Sunday evening.  I like routine.  It's easier than trying to mix things up.

Over a decade ago blogging became cool and I, several years late (as always), jumped on the bandwagon ten years ago, in 2007.  And although blogging is so early 2000s, I'm still plugging away because hey, habit.

When I first started blogging, Brandon and I lived in an eight-hundred square-foot duplex in Springville, Utah.  He was working at the local Stouffer's frozen food plant and I stayed home with Kathleen, who was ten months old.  He was working on employment for State, but it was only a dream.

Over the years we've added five more children, lived in six different houses, bought two more cars, been to seven more countries, and are on our second set of diplomatic passports.  I am on my sixth year of homeschooling that baby who could only crawl when I started blogging.  Ten years doesn't sound like that long until you start looking at the differences.  In another decade, my oldest will be close to graduating from college.

My motivations for blogging have changed over the years, too.  When I first started, it was simply to keep family up to date on all of the excitement of our lives.  Back before blogging, there were group emails and I switched to blogging to stop clogging up relative's inboxes.

But when Brandon joined State, our life got a little more exciting, and with the Arab Spring our life got a lot more exciting and I had a brief brush with fame and imagined that I could be one of those well-known bloggers that write funny, begging-to-be-reposted entries.  But then I realized that those sorts of people are 1. talented and 2. have a lot more motivation to do something more than just rattle off a few posts once a week.

But I keep blogging, even without the lure of fame to motivate me, because it's become a habit.  I tell myself that one day some of these stories will be interesting to my children and maybe my grandchildren and so I keep writing.  And also I know I have a few friends and family members that keep up with our (right now very boring) life.  But mostly, habit.

So here's to ten years.  I'll check in again in ten more!