Another opinion on the subject of my blog

I decided it's time to bid a fond farewell to the old blog name. This makes me a little bit sad, but I think it's for the best. My blog has been languishing for a couple of years, and I think the title might be part of the reason for that.

When I started to blog over five years ago, I thought it would be a great way to keep in touch with my family. In this way I quickly found out that most members of my family don't use computers. This, to me, seems weird, but that's a topic for another post. Fortunately for me, my super cool friends who were blogging had lots of readers, and sometimes those readers linked to my blog from my hipster friends'. This was gratifying. Some of those people began to compliment me and tell me I was funny. This was even more gratifying, until I realized that I was writing to an audience. Not that that's a bad thing. It just wasn't my original intent, and I think I kind of lost myself. I started trying to be funny, which for me anyway, doesn't work.

Back to the blog title. I started to want to post things that were more thoughtful or introspective, and I've been wanting to share some expressions of my faith for a long time. I've done it off and on, but haven't felt really comfortable with it. The title doesn't work for that kind of blog. It's a hilarious and snarky Jane Austen line, but is it a good idea to talk about a belief and encourage dialogue and sharing when there's a blazing banner at the top of the page that implies the opinions of others won't be considered? Answer: no, not really. Not that I want to be all serious. I just figure that if I'm blogging about my personal experience, it's a bit one-dimensional to only share the funny bits. I'd like to be real, and that means I need to be able to be serious (and more inclusive) sometimes.

So I revamped, and I think I'll be happy with the result. I think I'll write more, which is personally satisfying to me, even if I don't have an audience. Most of my family still doesn't read my blog (or remember I have one). I think my former cool cyberfriends have moved on. Everyone else is playing Farmville on Facebook and doesn't have time for blogs, so who knows if anyone will read this. Either way, I'm going to give it a shot.

You can read about the new title in the sidebar, but in a nutshell it means that I am stating a desire to improve myself, and that I want to make a valuable contribution to the world. To paraphrase from the booklet I mention in that sidebar note, if I'm going to be a flower in the garden of life, I want to be the kind that continues to bloom when the other blossoms have faded. I hope you'll join me.