What I learned from NaBloPoMo

Tomorrow is the last day of NaBloPoMo and I've learned a few things this month:

1. I enjoyed a self imposed reason to write every day
I liked that I was able to blog timely posts this month--a mothers day post near mothers day!--and that the requirement to develop content to publish every day encouraged me to venture from my typical blogging formula. Which leads me to my next point . . .

2. I need to think less, and write more
I spend too much time wondering whether an idea or topic is worthy of posting. The posts with the most hits this month were not the ones that I would have bet on: potty training, my thoughts on getting pregnant again, my lack of postpartum weight loss, and pinterest. I feel more freedom to write what's on my mind and to post whatever I feel like sharing.

3. I am censored in my writing
The audience of Marbles Rolling spans all of my circles, professionally and personally. Sometimes, I think of starting over with an anonymous blog and other times I don't feel like worrying about it, relationships be damned. But of course I don't do either of those things. Instead I keep an ongoing mental list of banned topics (and it just keeps growing). If you blog, maybe you can share with me your perspective on striking balance? 

4. I finally figured out why I blog
I've been blogging for a few years now and in that time the content and the frequency of my posts have fluctuated from posting every day, to posting only a few times a month, to 3 times a week, and sometimes more or sometimes less. It ebbs and flows with my energy, but at the end of the day I am a writer. This blog has helped me to own this very basic and essential part of who I am. Writing is my process. 

Though in the last year, especially, I've wondered to myself and to many people close to me, "Why do I blog?" or even, "What is the point of all this blogging?" I've been searching for meaning and direction, and a better understanding of my goals so that I can maximize the potential of this online space. In signing up for Pathfinder day at Blogher '12 (coming soon in August!!) I was hoping to discover something new that would bring clarity, but in making writing a priority this month I think I figured it out on my own. 

I blog because I need to write, it grounds me in my own experiences. I blog because I want the boys to know who their mother is, before they could ever really know me. I want them to know how passionate I have always been about them and for the life of our family. I blog as proof that we were all here, living this together.