Wednesday 23 May 2012

Write to remember

Something has happened to me over the last few days. I've wanted to write again. I went off blogging for a while. I'm not sure why. I just didn't feel like I had anything to say. Or rather I did, but I could compress it all into a Facebook status or Twitter update. I'm a sharer. I have thoughts and I share them. Not everyone is like this I've come to realise. I've also come to realise that just because I am, doesn't make it wrong. But I felt for a while that perhaps blogging was wrong. And it was time consuming. So I stopped.

Anyway I started writing this month. Nothing sexy. Just work stuff. But as I started to write, I felt the dust on the writing cogs start to waft up, spiderwebs softly easing away. 

I began to reread my blog. I realised how incredibly grateful I am that I have this amazingly thorough and emotional diary of such a specific time in my life. I began wishing, as I read it, that I had written down how I felt directly after the birth of my children, their baby years (which I cannot remember any of), pregnancy, life before parenthood (I recently found some old emails written from that time - how different and selfish it was), that period in my life before I met my husband when I was lost, the heartbreak of a first love break up, my first ever travels around the world with the wonder and awe that it brought on, the joy of freedom at leaving school and all the turmoil of teenage years and childhood. How insightful and useful it would be to read now what I was going through then. 

I then went to look at my sailing blog and discovered that it was gone. It was self-hosted rather than a free bloggger site and I'd stopped paying for hosting. I don't know if there's some way to get it back. But I felt heartbroken that it was gone. It captured all I felt at a very specific time of my life. And now it's lost to the ether, leaving me with what I think I felt, rather than what I actually felt.

I realised (belatedly) that I am going through a really big thing right now. We're moving. Again. I'm leaving behind all the friendships and networks that it's taken me six years to build up. I don't know if what we're doing is right but, us being us, we're doing it. I should be capturing how I feel, what I'm doing. My life right now is blog-fodder-tastic. And yet I've shied away from writing any of it. 

I don't even know if I will keep writing as voraciously as I did. But I do know that a blog is something worth cherishing. I want to find the time to write it, even if no-one in the world reads it. I say that, but it's someone else reading it that lead me to write this post. 

I received today an email from a lady who I don't know, but who read a blog post of mine from 2010. She took the time out of her day to email me to thank me for writing the post as it helped her. How awesome is that? She didn't need to do that. She could have read my blog, taking what she needed from it and gone on her way. But she didn't. She stopped to say thank you. And even though I don't know her, nor she me, I felt a connection with a complete stranger on the other side of the world. Perhaps I'm odd, but it's little things like that which fill me with an 'everything is all right with the world' feeling.

There was one other reason for writing this blog post. I have had a glass of wine (that's not the reason although may be the lubricating factor). I had the glass of wine in honour of a man I seldom think of because I never knew him. My grandfather. He would have been 100 years old today. Except he died when he was a lot younger than that. I want to say he was 43 but I'm probably wrong. He died when my father was a young boy. I've always thought about him as my father's father, my poor father who didn't have a father when he needed one. But I've rarely thought about him as my grandfather. Much less my children's great grandfather.  But today I want him remembered. Even if it's just on this tiny corner of the internet.  I want it noted and remembered in writing. Lest we forget. Here's to Arthur Charles Collier the 1st. 

And while I'm making toasts....here's to writing. 

  

9 comments:

katyboo1 said...

Well, I think it is brilliant that you have rediscovered your writing mojo. I love reading your blog and I was sad when you stopped writing. Welcome back for however long you choose to stay and whatever you choose to say.

Home Office Mum said...

Thanks Katy - I just tweeted you. I tried to comment on your blog but as I am a lowly user of blogger it won't let me. Anyway, that book you described sounded exactly like Roberto Bolano's book 2666 - trying way too hard to be clever and deep. When actually it just sucked.

Potty Mummy said...

Here's to writing, indeed. And you do it so well!

Expat mum said...

I was just thinking the other day that four of my children's great grandparents would have been one hundred this year. None of them lived anywhere close to that age unfortunately. Here's to all of them! (Raises glass, even though it's only 9.30am)

Home Office Mum said...

thanks Potty. And Expat Mum, I may have gone long on the glass raising

nappy valley girl said...

You've been much missed and I very much hope you take it up again.

What a shame about the sailing blog - is there no way of salvaging it?

Home Office Mum said...

Nvg - thanks and I have no idea if the sailing blog is salvageable. Sure there must be a way of testing it back.

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