No more NaBloPoMo

Today is the last day of National Blog Posting Month, and I made it, again. I almost stopped caring, quite a few times, when things started to get heavier and heavier, but it gave me something else to think about besides what's going on here, and that wound up being a good thing.

Last year, after I finished my first NaBloPoMo, I was all "I can do this, this posting everyday thing: I'll keep it going all year." Yeah, this year, I know better - t'ain't gonna happen.

But, I also know I'm still committed to this, this sharing with people thing. I hate how my best ideas for blogs happen as soon as I click the little "Shut down computer" button. Or in the shower. Or while I'm too sick to roll over and type. But I love that I have this almost constant voice in my head that's urging me to write.

Because I am a writer - I've always written, assume I always will.

I may not be the best writer, but trying to figure out the right words to say to make people feel what I am saying is important to me. (Sometimes, too important, hence the multitude of unpublished drafts in my post listings... if I can't find the right way to say it, I probably won't say it at all.)


I also know how important all of you are to me: my readers and the writers of the blogs I read. I'm addicted to, and committed to, this community. All of the smart, funny, brilliant, quirky, understanding, thoughtful, determined, and generous (mostly) women I've met since I fell into the blogosphere.

Every single person who I 'know' because they've sat at their computer, turned on their brains, moved their fingers and opened their hearts to the world.

To me.

It's funny how often I start a conversation with "Well, I was reading this blog and," or "You know my friend Janice said," ...or Miss Zoot, or the Goldfish - you know, all of these people I've never actually met but who feel closer to me than my in-person friends?
Or how so many of the quotes going into my collected wisdom folders are from blogs.
Or how a trick/technique I've read about here becomes a part of my daily routine.
Or how often I will be doing something (watching TV, eating, sitting in a doctor's waiting room again) and something I've read in the blogosphere will pop into my head.
Or how frequently I find myself sending good vibes to places I've never been, except in my heart.

So, with all that's going on in my life right now - and all I can see that is going on in all of yours - I'm grateful that we've got these places, these little refuges.

I started this blog more than 2 years ago, looking for an outlet, a very necessary place to call my own, even if it wasn't a physical place. I never dreamed that it would also be a place where I would feel so connected - to myself, to women, to mothers, to the world.

In real life, I'm so often the misfit, the one who doesn't/can't just blend in: I'm too sick, too lonely, too straight laced, too weird, too anxious, too abby-normal.

And yet here, I belong.

I'm just another voice, just another open heart.