100 Candles!

This is my 100th post. I didn't have any cake with which to celebrate, so I just stuck some candles in a half-eaten loaf of zucchini bread, which is like cake. I was going to write out 1-0-0 with the candles, but I only had room for 1-0. Then I got to blow them out! It was like my birthday, except now I've gotten to blow out candles twice this year! I felt like I was doing something naughty, like when I was a kid and would sneak out of my room after bedtime and eat Fudge Rounds from the "School Snacks" basket on my parents' kitchen counter. (I eventually tattled on myself about the Fudge Rounds. I remember I was crying really hard, hugging my mom and probably coating her with snot.)

If you haven't subscribed to Bucketful of Happy, you're missing out on the great satisfaction it would bring me to not see a single-digit number next to "Members." Over there, to your right, there are three ways to subscribe. Pick one and do it! Let's see if we can get that number to...ELEVEN!

There's a publicity stunt I've seen on other blogs that I've always wanted to try. So, in honor of my 100th post: Leave a comment telling me which post has been your favorite, and you'll be entered into a drawing for me to mail you something! It's going to be a random and inexpensive something. A surpriiiiiiiiiiise. One day you'll open your mailbox and a package will be in there! WHAT COULD IT BE?

I'll choose the winner this Sunday. I'm only going to get three comments. One of them is going to be penis enlargement spam. This is going to be awkward.

One Year of Competence

After being inspired by a sewing blog last year, I decided to start one. It took me a month to think of a name for it. Finally, I came up with something, and made my blog and then my first post ("Plaid Flannel and Duct Tape") on December 5th, 2010.

In February, I made a post ("Why Is This Blog Completely Pointless?") explaining my motives for writing. Also in that post I explained how the creation of the blog had been a challenge to myself: Write regularly, or face (mostly imaginary) public humiliation by having my unfinished project hanging around on the Web for everyone to see.

The motives - a need to write and a need to keep a record of our life (and I just won't mention the third one I listed) - haven't changed. The effectiveness of the pulic-humiliation blackmail hasn't changed, either. I know seventy-six posts in one year isn't exactly prolific; that's only an average of one post every five days, and I'd wanted three per week. (One month, I managed only two posts.) I never reached that consistent three-per-week goal, but at least I always came back.

I've written thousands of words I never would've written, taken hundreds of pictures I wouldn't have taken.

I've learned. I've learned so much. I know now how to sit down with nothing and make something. I've learned how to proofread and cut and re-word and polish and publish. I've learned which phrases tend to sneak into my paragraphs over and over, and how to hunt them and kill them so you don't notice them out of the corner of your eye and get that jolt of irritated recognition that takes you out of the work.

I've gotten faster. I've learned that you have to force those first few clumsy words, start slow and loud and shaky before you can gain speed and take off and fly for a little while, up where nothing can distract you and all you see is sun.

I've gotten better. Some posts make me cringe, but now I can tell what's wrong with them and what I need to avoid. Those posts teach me more than the good ones do.

I need to find my own voice. My sentence structure and the way I put the words together is all an unconscious imitation of a certain author whose work, after you count re-reads, is maybe 1/3rd of everything I've ever read (and that's a lot.)

But I'll get there. I am getting there.

Today, I'm going to be happy. I would've been happy anyway, because it's sunny and I love my life and I get to "put my shoes out" tonight (see: "Candy In My Shoes!"), but the other cool thing about today is that I get to celebrate my competence. For one whole year, I've worked on a project that hasn't always been easy. I've been doing what I was made to do. It's a wonderful feeling.

Why is this blog completely pointless?

Sewing. Duct tape. Tablecloths. Ice cream. "Technically, I deserve to be dead right now." Yoga. Why is this blog completely pointless? Or, why do I feel compelled to spend hours writing about the most inane topics, posting these writings on the internet, and using them to draw as much attention to myself as possible?

There are three answers: I need to write, I need attention, and this is what I'm supposed to do.

Allow me to elaborate.

Answer one: I need to write.
For as long as I can remember, I've written for fun and for self-expression. Here's a condensed illustrated history:

First Grade: Hooray! I can read, write, and almost spell big words
Fourth Grade: The Unicorn-In-An-Elementary-School-At-Night story
Fifth Grade: Nature-related non-rhyming poetry
Ages Fourteen to Fifteen: Terrible angsty poetry resulting from a rather disturbing unrequited-love obsession with a guy eight years older than me
Ages Fifteen to Sixteen: A terrible vampire story masquerading as fiction but actually resulting from a rather disturbing unrequited-love obsession with a guy six years older than me*
Ages Seventeen to Twenty-One: I keep trying to write fiction, but all I end up with is a pile of fragments of dead stories
Ages Twenty-One to Present: I write to keep a record of day-to-day life

*Thankfully, once I hit seventeen or so, I grew out of what was starting to become a creepy pattern. The guy I'm now obsessed with is only a year and a half older than me.

So, writing's "my thing." Problem was, I wasn't writing very often. I wasn't getting enough practice. So I blackmailed myself. It went like this: "You're going to start a blog and tell everyone about it. If you don't post regularly, they'll be like, 'Oh, look, something else she started and then didn't have the discipline to keep up with,' and everyone will see what a failure you are. Deal?"

Deal. 

Reason Two: I need attention.
I'll admit it. I'm in constant need of approval, praise, and validation. 

Answer Three: This autobiographical stuff is what I'm supposed to do.

There's no more poetry, terrible or otherwise, because these days I don't have patience for that kind of pretentious drama. There's no more fiction because I wasn't good at it and because I couldn't make it relevant to my faith (considering my preferred topics involved dead guys and the women who loved them.)

No poetry, no dark undead romances. That left nonfiction. As my last attempts at fantasy floundered, my journals began to flourish. Notebooks I really only used for recording sadness, anger, and other mental imbalances began to include records of good days I wanted to remember.

Then came the project that cemented my commitment to autobiographical stuff. I was grimly trying to resuscitate my last fiction story when I first felt the need to make a written record of the beginning of my relationship with Joe. I wanted to protect memories that time had already begun to erase. It was a scary concept; I had no idea how to put together a thorough factual record of a period I didn't completely remember. I didn't have all the memories, I didn't have all the details, and I dreaded trying to work it all out (especially since it was kind of a difficult subject. Don't ask.) But the idea stayed in the back of my mind, no matter how many paragraphs of fantasy drivel my labors produced.

Then, a few months after that last fiction story was officially dead and I had nothing else to do, I started working on the record...and, for the first time in years, completed a writing project. Our beginning was saved from any more forgetting. It was a huge relief to have it written down like that. The uneasy feeling I'd had for months was replaced by quiet.

That's when I started to understand why I was given the ability to write. For some reason, it's my job to record our good (and not-so-good-but-important) times the way the family videographer records their kids' birthdays.

I don't know whether my own children (or anyone else) will ever care about what I'm keeping...but I do know that I'll care. Already, I care. I've preserved memories that would've been lost. My words create snapshots of details I never would've seen again.

So, there you have it. This blog has been really good for me. In spite of my discomfort with the level of narcissism I exhibit by starting and maintaining a website completely devoted to talking about myself, I'll keep practicing and posting to avoid public humiliation. (Well, for now. We'll see how long it lasts, won't we?)