100th Post: How I Came to Blog

So this is my 100th post. Well, if you went to the trouble of actually counting my posts, this would actually be 99 because I have one draft post that will remain draft for a while longer. In honour of this milestone (I'll still count the milestone) I am going to write a bloggy post.

When I find a new blog and I like the posts I see on the home page, the next thing I do is go into the archives to check out the very first post, or first few posts. Usually, the blogger has something to say about why they're starting the blog. Strangely, my first post is Swee'pea's birth story and has nothing about why I started this blog. The next several posts offer no more information; they are the emails I sent home from our trip to South Africa in early 2005, before Swee'pea was even a twinkle in either of our eyes. I've posted a couple of comments on other blogs about why and how I started blogging but this is the first time (I think) I've talked about it on my own blog.

I wrote Swee'pea's birth story when he was about two weeks old I think. I loved reading birth stories on the mothering.commune forum when I was pregnant and I wanted to write his before I forgot the details. Then the high wore off and I wrote about how much those early weeks sucked, emotionally, so I wouldn't forget that. My sister wrote a book when she was on mat leave (she's still looking for a publisher), and she mentioned that she wanted more stories from mums. So I thought she might like to include these pieces. As Swee'pea grew and I felt out my mothering legs, I kept writing. I have been so aware of time passing and my failing memory from the sleep deprivation that I had to write some of this stuff down. Maybe Swee'pea will be interested when he grows up; but mostly I write for me. I know I will be interested when he grows up.

This summer, we got central air installed, much to our ambivalence. One day I was wilting in the heat, well, camping in our bedroom that was kept cool by an overused window unit, waiting for the next week when we were scheduled to get central air, and I was thinking about how this will be the only summer that Swee'pea and I will be at home. Next summer I'll be at my air conditioned workplace and he'll be in daycare. That made me sad. And I wondered if there could be a way I could work from home, writing. I decided to start by putting my writing on the web. Sugar Daddy is a web designer and suggested a blog. I had never seen or read a blog but I didn't think I wanted one. I'd never really had a journal before and didn't really want to start a public one. But the technology was easy to use so I started one and put up the birth story. Those emails from SA had sat around for a long time and I'd been wanting to put them in a public forum so I put those up too. Then the postpartum piece. I can't remember what came after that but I think I started to actually write in blogger.

I started to read other blogs and kept writing my own. I know it's only been a short time and I don't have (m)any readers but I'm hooked and I really feel like I Am a Blogger. This is my genre. I don't have the imagination for fiction or the knowledge or awareness for journalism but boy I can blog. Blogging, writing about the magic and minutae of life and the Internet, this I can do.