Endings And Beginnings

When I first read that Blogstream was closing down on April 30, I felt a sense of sadness, and relief. After 5 years I was finally not going to have to feel guilty for not feeling like blogging. I decided that I wasn't going to move anyplace, just keep up my Twitter account and give my friend Egaladeist a blog post once in awhile for TheTAZZone.com. Yep, no more sitting in front of the computer wracking my pea brain to find a topic to post about. No more sitting in front of the computer reading everyone and trying to think of something intelligent to say in a comment. I was done. Finished with blogging. I could rip out a few more posts in the next few weeks and then celebrate, somewhere around the 26th of April the end of 5 years of blogging rather than the beginning of the 6th year.


Oh yeah! SUUUUUUUUURE I could.

I'm sure that since I mentioned it enough you all remember why I started blogging in the first place and how I chose the name for my blog. The title is just an adult way of expressing the visceral pain of losing ones beloved Mother. We can't go around screaming I WANT MY MOMMY when we're over 50. Well, we could, but after awhile someone will tell us to grow up. However, expressing it quietly and with love in a blog title by choosing a frequent bit of wisdom one's Mommy shared, works pretty darn good. Only, I was about to lose that avenue of expression and I'm not adult enough, even at nearly 62 years of age to handle that without a tantrum. Ok, so I didn't really have a tantrum, I just simply started quietly freaking out.

What was a quiet, "I'm going to miss you guys, hope you'll tell me where you land so I can read you" became an OH NOOOOOOOOOOOOO, IM LOSING EVERYTHING! WHAT'LL I DOOOOOO? Ahem! Excuse me a minute while I compose myself. I'm sorry, Mom's been gone now for 5 years this month, and I'm not willing to stop honoring her by giving up the one thing she tried to encourage me to do.

See? Blogging is the perfect writing avenue for me. I never had a desire to publish a book or even write one for that matter. I always enjoyed the writing of letters to my family when I was living in another state, and I wrote numerous letters to young men I cared about who were serving in Viet Nam. The writing for a living bug never bit me. Even after 5 years of actually writing, it still hasn't. Writing as a hobby is another thing entirely. When I sit down at the computer, I hear my Mom say; "You are an excellent writer, you should write books".

I've always felt that Mom is somewhere over my shoulder reading what I write and admittedly not always approving. She raised me to stand up for what I believe in and fight back when someone got in my way. She couldn't do that, she didn't know how, yet she raised me to be who I am. She never understood how I became who she wanted me to be without knowing how to be it herself. I never told her that I figured out that in order to be what she wanted me to be, I had to do everything exactly opposite of the way she did it. So, in essence, she raised me by providing an example of who not to be.

She couldn't stand on her own two feet and fight back. I had to do it for her. There were times when she felt I had gone too far in that fight, but she was satisfied that I could make it on my own. She accepted that I didn't have the desire to write and while disappointed in that, she was content to watch me achieve what I did in whatever else I tried. My ability to teach myself to paint was something she admired most. However there still was her voice saying to me "You have all this talent, what a shame you won't try writing."

So, after she was gone, I tried writing. Did it on a regular basis for 5 years next month. Some of my efforts I'm proud of, some I just enjoy a lot. Some of it I could have lived without, but that's the manner of the writing beast.

Now, we are nearing the end of Blogstream and I found that I'm unable to let go of what I started doing for her because now I do it for myself. I write for ME. And if you're still for some strange reason willing to read my drivel, you can find me here: