Happy Fifth!

Wow, I've been keeping this blog for five years now! I am amazed. I didn't think I'd stay interested in it that long. I figured either I would get sad that no one reads my posts, and give up, or I'd get nervous that too many people read my posts, and go silent. Well, I am a little sad that no one reads my posts (snif!). Except for my one loyal and awesome reader who knows who she is.

I wonder what the secret is for getting lots of readers. Maybe having a wild and interesting life? But some people just write about their kids and post pictures of the new lamp that they ordered from a catalog and get 1000 comments a day. Being terribly funny? That's beyond me, although I can be wry or funny in an unintentional, tripping over my own feet way. Emailing real-life contacts and asking them to read the blog? But then I wouldn't be able to write about them behind their backs.

Perhaps the secret is reading other people's blogs and posting comments on them. But I do that sometimes, and never get a return visit. Realistically, I will have to just keep deriving satisfaction from writing this blog and not from hopes of being "heard."

I read my first entry and had to laugh. I was being so coy. I don't have a sister! And my middle name is not even Phoenix, though it would be great if it was. Anyway, I look back on the person I was five years ago and I've definitely changed. As I read those early entries, I see how desperate I was to be liked. I was nervous that no one - my boyfriend, my coworkers, my friends - liked me enough and I was going around trying to be really sweet and appealing so that they would. I'm not so much like that any more. I feel stronger inside and more capable of shrugging things off.

There was also an element of hopelessness and fear in some of the early entries, because I wanted things (marriage, a house, kids) that seemed unattainable. And now I have them. I am just rolling around in those riches every day. Really, I am much happier for having them, just as I knew I would be, and the fact that I got the things I wanted so much makes me feel a bit more secure. Plus, motherhood has given me a self-esteem boost because I've learned how to do all these things I never had experience with before, and I'm endlessly capable and magic in my child's eyes. Even though I'm ranting and raving these days about being infertile, secretly it's not throwing me too badly. I feel confident that I'm going to overcome it and either manage to conceive or manage to be OK with a one-child family.

I wrote a lot more about what I was reading, back in the early days. I still find time to read nowadays, mostly on the train to work. I should write more about that. Right now I'm rereading Heart's Blood by Jane Yolen. I feel like she is really writing about a real place, the details are so well worked out. I can feel the hot shimmery desert sun, and see the fields of burnwort, and hear the dragons houghing and smell the heaps of fewmets the bondboys are shoveling. I wonder how much time she put into imagining all that stuff, before she even started writing the story.

I also used to write a lot about cleaning, and how guilty I felt for doing that instead of going out and being an interesting person. As though some invisible outside presence was going to judge me for not being well rounded enough. I don't worry about that any more. I still like cleaning, and I still spend way more time at home than I do expanding my horizons, but it's all right with me.

All in all, it's been a good five years.