It's Been A Year...Now What?!

Two weeks ago I celebrated my one year anniversary of this blog (my blogiversary, if you will). I wanted to write something great about how far I feel I've come as a writer and how thankful I am for the support I've received over the last year and what I planned to do next. I wrote a draft, scraped it, wrote another draft, and scraped that one too. Then I proceeded to spend the bulk of the last two weeks staring at a blank computer screen with a blinking cursor. Nothing was coming out right and I found myself with one of the most crippling cases of writer's block I've ever had. It was like my brain had completely shut down. You know that expression "The wheel is spinning but the hamster is dead"? Well, my wheel was rusted and decrepit, with a hamster skeleton and tumble weed blowing across the vast emptiness of my brain. I could not, for the life of me, figure out what was wrong. The truth is, I do feel like I've come a long way and the gratitude I feel that anyone wants to visit my little corner of the internet to read about what's going on in my life is immeasurable. But why couldn't I put it into writing?  It took two weeks for me to realize that the part I couldn't find the words for.

What's next.

Because really, what is next? When I first began this blog, a professor of mine had suggested writing it for a year and seeing where it went, then trying to turn it into a book. Which is a great idea in theory (and the assumption that I could even do that was a really nice compliment), but I'm not so sure. This isn't a blog entirely about parenting, or politics, or music or anything really, so what kind of book could it possibly make? So yes, a book is a nice thought, but as far as an actual goal, I'm not entirely sure it's a realistic one.

So now here I am, a year later, and maybe it's time to face some harsh realities.

I'm not Julie Powell. Ten years ago when Julie Powell started the Julie/Julia project, the word "blog" wasn't even in our vocabulary. Today, everyone and their mother writes a blog on every subject imaginable, and they're all trying to turn it into something bigger and better. I'd kick myself for continuously being ten steps behind the rest of the world, but I'm trying not to be so hard on myself, and it wouldn't really help anything anyway. And if I'm really honest with myself, I never actually expected to be the next Julie Powell or any kind of blogging guru with instant internet fame, whose wisdom was sought by the masses. The problem lies in the fact that I didn't have any expectations at all, and while going into something with no expectations can be a good thing, the flip side is that you have no possible way of knowing if you are succeeding at what you set out to do.


Here's what I do know: Over the last year I wrote approximately thirty-one blogs ranging on topics from potty training to my dad's death, topics that a year ago I would have never have imagined writing about and sending off into the internet world to face possible scrutiny. I have regular readers in the United States, Canada, Russia, France, and oddly enough, two mystery readers from England that have read every blog (I don't want to get my hopes up, but it could be William and Kate...you never know!). People who knew me before they started reading this blog say that they feel like they know me better, and strangers who have come across it either through a friend of a friend or by accident say that they feel like they've known me for years, which is an amazing compliment. Because of this blog I was able to write for TOMS shoes, which was an incredible experience and one that I hope to repeat in the future. I have been lucky enough to have an endless stream of support, praise, constructive criticism, and tough love when I needed it the most from people that I love and respect. My point of all of this is that I don't want to downplay what I feel like I've already accomplished, because I really do feel like this last year was an accomplishment. I just don't know where (if anywhere) to go from here.

Ugh. See why this was so hard to write??

For now, I'm considering my options. Maybe I'll streamline this blog so it's about one specific topic instead of a little bit of everything. But since I highly doubt anyone wants to read a blog that consists entirely of cute kid stories or my unwavering Tina Fey fixation, I probably won't. Maybe I'll finally get around to starting that fiction blog I thought would be fun to start a few months ago, or maybe I'll just stick with this and see where it goes. The obvious answer is to sit back and do nothing and if something is meant to happen, it will happen on its own, in its own time. The problem is, I'm not really a "sit back and see what happens" kind of person. So it appears my own ambition is holding me back. Ironically enough.

I have no idea what the future holds, but no matter what I decide to do, I know that I will still be writing something and I can only hope that you guys will be still be reading it.