A hard to explain place.
I think I've said that a lot over the past year or so. But now it's, like, more.
For the last three weeks, I have been thinking and noodling and pondering just what is going on with me. Where am I at? What do I want to say? Do I have anything to say?
That last question is the most important because you see, I recently read something another blogger wrote in which she was giving new blogger advice. One piece jumped out at me and I have been chewing on it ever since. She said to write what you want to read.
Yes, of course! That is excellent blogging advice and it has given me much pause.
It made me dive into my archives and purge them. Yes, I decided to delete a ton of old posts that had gotten very few views and/or were just plain dumb. I cannot believe how many posts I published that were really just patent fluff.
A few days later Google emailed to inform me that "Googlebot identified a significant increase in the number of URLs on http://www.imdancingintherain.com/ that return a 404 (not found) error."
And I had to laugh. You've got to be kidding me. I could care less if those links no longer show up in search results. Actually, I prefer they don't (which is why I deleted them).
Obviously.
The next day, I received another email, this time from AddThis, the social sharing app I use. They wanted to congratulate me because they noticed a traffic spike on my website.
And again I chuckled.
So that's the funny thing that happened. The not so funny thing is that I seem to be in a difficult place in my life that I don't know how to write my way through.
I noticed something while sifting through my craptastic archives. The tone of many of those posts sounded a lot happier. I used lots of humor and excited exclamation points. I wrote about Twitter and knitting legwarmers and shared photos of my baby bumps and what I looked like in high school.
I thought this stuff is so irrelevant to my life now; I'm not so merry these days. And then I thought, I can't, nor do I want to, write like this anymore.
My life has changed. I've changed.
The dominating force in my life now is my chronically ill husband and caring for him and our children. I would love to be a voice for spousal caregivers, especially those who are still young(er), like me.
"Write what you want to read."
But I don't think I can. I don't have words of wisdom for others going through what I'm experiencing. I don't have strategies to share for coping with this situation. I already spend too much time thinking about how much Mark's condition sucks and what's gonna happen next and what it might be like when he dies....
Do I need to write about it too? My aunt once said to be careful to remember this is a blog, not a diary.
Blogs should offer the reader something. Something helpful, to learn, to be inspired by or to laugh at.
You can see my most popular posts over in the sidebar. Currently, ONE has to do with what's actually going on in my life right now. And I promise you, it has a ton fewer views than the others listed.
I titled my blog "Dancing in the Rain" because I believe that even when life is hard, you can find things to be joyful and happy about. I still believe that, but it isn't coming as easily as it used to.
The word I chose for this year is Genuine, but I feel like a sham. I'm not sure I should be pontificating about anything. I can't be the poster child for spousal caregivers. But I can't ignore it either. It's too big.
A couple of years ago I thought I could be a good blogger, but now I don't think I have anything of value to offer.
I'm at a loss.
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