Back in the early days of this blog, there was a lot of capturing of memories.
I was trying to create an alternative to a Christmas newsletter, to tell the story of our year with a bit more detail (and hopefully some interest).
In those far-off days of child-free travel – even solo travel – there was plenty to capture. A lot turned into a Travel category – but plenty came under the heading of ‘this made me stop and think’.
Sometimes we need travel to help us do that. To see our daily lives with fresh perspective, when the backdrop has changed.
Sometimes the travel was holiday time: at which point, I would remember to slow down.
To sit and drink coffee, and watch sparrows.
To listen to the sound of the surf, and the regularity of its timing.
Sometimes, travel gives us opportunities to connect with much deeper experiences – or find that through others’ explorations of challenging themes.
Over time, the blog found a few other topics along the way. There was food, there was reading, there were even occasionally board games.
And there were memories connected to all of these. That was the reason for writing in the first place.
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A blog which includes our personal lives is in many ways a series of memories; a tray full of butterflies, preserved for future viewing.
There’s plenty more we can do online of course: attempt to persuade, mount our particular soapbox, try to make others laugh.
But blogs give us particular opportunities to record life, moment by moment. Even if we only capture a particular handful, it can be enough to give us the feel of those days again.
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Some blogs are happy to focus on that as their main function: a memoirist blog.
And over last year, I was able to enjoy exploring others’ moments from their lives – some intentionally a form of diary, others using the experience as a way of focusing on what was important.
Little by little, I find myself wanting to do this more.
I also came across this site, which encourages journalling of all kinds of experiences, both the significant, and those which seem mundane, but which future generations may well appreciate.
I began to see that a blog could well be a journal, a memoir – and a place to reflect on the things that make us stop and think, right there in everyday life.
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The eco audit series started as a question about how my teenage self would view my environmental credentials now.
But it turned into a way to explore just how much has changed in 20 years or so. And I saw some of where my environmental stances had come from – as well as chronicling life in 2013 along the way.
The Christmas Carol series has been about past, present and future – but it didn’t take long to see that much of each post was about the past.
In some cases, starting to write became the spur for recalling what felt like the faintest of memories, yet some which remain very important to me. Ones I wanted (and still want) to hang onto.
We tell Junior Reader stories, you see. Books (obviously), but ones about us, our families.
Stories about why Mummy likes prawns. The places that Mummy and Daddy went to when it was just them. Even stories about other children, and their sayings.
Some of my stories on the blog are ones we’ve already shared – and others are now captured, waiting to be shared at some point. Or even for Junior Reader to explore, in time.
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Parenting brings a whole new perspective on moments. We go into it longing for those magical moments – and those do come. Along with the many mundane, ordinary and (whisper it) boring ones too.
But I have come to realise, with the perspective of the blogs I’ve read (and some others), that there are plenty of Moments (with a capital M) in my everyday life. I just need to look for them.
Back in November, a number of people were writing about what they were grateful for, as a lead-up to Thanksgiving. I got involved too, following an e-course that I’d done earlier in the year, and the online group I joined later.
Many people have promoted the positives of exploring gratitude on a regular basis. Some are particularly eloquent on the subject.
Reading others’ reasons for gratitude can be profound. Some are very simple, some speak of great heartbreak and loss, and life in the backdrop of these.
By December, the online group’s focus had changed to looking for moments of beauty on a day by day basis.
And it is perspective changing – I particularly found myself setting out for school
pick-up, looking for beauty, and consequently finding it, far more than I might have done otherwise.
So. For all these reasons, and no doubt more, the Moments are here to stay. They will be mine, yes, but I hope they will become something more than that in the writing, and the remembering.