Let the Blogging Begin

With the husband out of town on a fishing trip and the daughter entertained by a visiting bestie (their word for best friend), it seemed as good a time as any to invite my fellow blogger, 40winkzzz, over to help me set up my new blogsite. I'd been thinking about indulging myself in this writing outlet world for a few months, but every time I'd sign into blogspot.com I could only get as far as the login and password set- up before my mind would boggle with thoughts of failing at bloggle. It wasn't immediately clear to me how to actually view the title page of my blog, let alone type anything on the page. Moreover, I wanted, but had no idea how, to create an intriguing background like the one on my favorite blogspot, A 2nd Cup of Coffee- she has a slick, red coffee machine with coffee actually physically pouring out of a spout at the top of her blog page. When I first saw that I just sat and stared at it stupefied. I thought, I don't even know how to put a picture on a page, in fact, I don't even have a camera, but this blogger has created running coffee. I was aghast at the 500 billion blogs that already existed and wondered if there were really enough people in the world to read all of them. Who would read mine and why? With all of those thoughts crashing around in my head, all I could do was click on the red X in the upper right hand corner of my computer screen and go back to wandering around the house thinking about blogging.

But then the moment of truth came. A revelation from the Teacher of Ecclesiastes- "this (aforementioned stuff) is meaningless.." My blog will be my writing outlet- a place for me to put the words that gather in my head while I'm doing the dishes or vacuuming the living room or driving to work. This will be good because putting those words somewhere else will free up space in my brain, so I will have room to comtemplate the potential environmental threats of land-based biofuels and how it might be that a mere man, Moses, told God to remember His people, as if He was really going to wipe them all out-or was he? If anyone in blogland chooses to read my blog should he or she stumble upon it, I'll feel like an author- that'll be sweet. And if one decides to post a comment about anything I happen to write-icing on the cake for me- I am a communication major, I like dialogue.

So, here I am, two days after 40winkzzz stopped in for coffee and gave me sufficient encouragement, still in my pajamas at 1:45 in the afternoon, plunking out my first blog entry while simultaneously helping my daughter with her Saxon algebra 2 and ACT prep exercises. I'm obviously going to have to get a grip, as shirking homeschooling responsibilities and ignoring personal grooming details are not going to be workable practices for me. The background is a best of the worst pick from only about four choices of blogspot templates and I don't know if or when anyone will ever see any pictures here. I thought the title was my origional idea, but probably at least ten other bloggers already use some version of this Gone With the Wind quote for their blog, which is why I had to use the entire line. I'm signing it Scarlett for now, because I'm still nervous about divulging personal information to the cyberspace world. But- I did it! I churned one out. I'd like to think that my new site offers at least something memorable- perhaps it could be this: the blogsite with the most potential- the most room for measurable improvement. I'll figure out how to jazz it up. After all, tomorrow is another day.

Heidi