Blogging For Five Years!

Grinnin' Barretts has been up and running for five years!

It was actually Nathan's idea to start a blog in the first place, and it was he who helped me overcome my nervousness about blogging. He started the whole ball rolling back on June 12, 2010, with a short but sweet description of his experience juggling coconuts in our backyard. He even posted pictures! That simple beginning helped convince me that maybe, writing about our family on the Internet wouldn't be such an intimidating task.

Not long after that, I decided to blog about my annual salsa canning, a blog which has ended up inspiring several of my friends, including those in other countries! I just hope they're able to find the right kind of ingredients overseas. (Speaking of which, I should probably update that post sometime...I have tweaked the salsa recipe quite a bit since then.)

That salsa post, which friends have been linking to for years, was the post that opened my eyes to personal blogging. I realized that people around the world could see our blog, and comment on it. I realized it could be a good way to keep in touch with friends and family who may not live close by. I realized that blogging could scratch my writer's itch (I've always fantasized about being a novelist, or a notorious journalist...heck, any kind of famous writer is okay by me). And as someone who has not been very good at keeping a regular journal, the blog proved an opportunity (and a challenge) to document more of our family's history than has hitherto been done. This is a challenge that I rose to meet gladly.

This is not to say that our family's little blog has anything of earth-shattering import on its pages. The blog was originally intended as a grab-bag of all kinds of things: politics, movies, family news, humor, books...you name it. Over time, our ambitions have been modified, and now the blog mostly consists of family news, with my occasional shallow detours into entertainment news & analysis (that's how the English major inside me gets her kicks).

Nathan hasn't contributed as regularly to the blog as he likes...this is for a number of reasons, but mostly because  I have more time to write in it than he does. However, he's always been very supportive of my blogging, even when it takes away from his valuable night-time computer activities. I am so grateful to him for letting me work on the blog and encouraging me to record our family's history here. He's also chimed in on a few important occasions: he's been transcribing our "toddler journals" that we kept for Lorelai and Aurora when they were little. It's great to have that information recorded in a more permanent place, not just jotted down in a notebook. And when Nathan visited Washington, D.C. a couple of years ago, he was able to write at length about his adventures in our nation's capital.

The blog has not been perfect by any means, and I've learned a lot in my time using it. It's made me learn how to write better, how to write meaningfully, and how to navigate the Internet and its many wonders and dangers. I am grateful to live in this era, in which technology can aid us in so many ways, including record-keeping. I hope that the few thoughts I leave in this account will help my family and my descendants get some sense of what our lives were like, and what sorts of things matter to us. True, I tend to focus more on the "special events" in our lives, but I hope it will still be illuminating as to what makes our family tick. Someday, maybe I'll even convert this blog to a series of books, and then--BAM! Instant family history, with a hard copy to be held and enjoyed by grand-kids. Who knows?

So, here's to many more years with the blog! I don't know if it will always be in its current format. I don't know if I'll be able to update it with the same frequency in later years; life keeps getting busier and busier. But I do know that I'll do my best to keep it going. Five years is the longest I've ever maintained a regular journal; that's a good sign to me. I hope it will always be a place where I can share my thoughts and our family news. Thanks to everyone who reads and comments; I hope you enjoy your time here, and hope you continue to do so.