The “actual” Barney Stinson Blog is here, and it’s fun. But I’m still mad about how that show ended. Boo, HIMYM!

From August 2008 to April 2013 I published 294 blog posts at LaFamigliaD. Today, like reading a bad 10th grade term paper, I roll my eyes at a lot of what’s there. Including the site’s title.

But Mustapha Hamoui, writer of Geek Blog, talks about Why the Blog Still Wins over the microblogging-style posts of Facebook and Twitter.  His beef with Twitter – mine too – is that writing in 140 characters can be brief and disjointed. It doesn’t “leave you in a strong relationship with the source”. And regarding that life-suck that is Facebook? We all know an algorithm decides who and what we will see, all the time. I’ll get into my dysfunctional relationship with Facebook some other time, when I can stay up and rant. It’s a school night.

By contrast, the personal blog is not owned or controlled by a company. I don’t even use sidebar advertisements here.  I’m so old-fashioned. Maybe someday I’ll decide to creep out my half dozen readers with banner ads for whatever product they last searched on Amazon. The difference between little status updates and a personal blog is control; your writing is your product, you control what of you is viewed, and social media just ships it out there.

Blogging is the act of writing about whatever you want, for everyone and no one but yourself. You keep in mind your audience and your own standards. You try to express yourself as artfully as possible.  You accept that whatever you publish is “out there”, for every eye in the world. You also accept that NOBODY could ever read it. I used blog a lot. I wish I did more of it. I also used to write Star Wars fan fiction in 4th grade, but you don’t see me doing that any more.  And this was 1990; Star Wars was not even cool again until ’99.

So… Lately I get asked, “Why are you blogging again?”

Well, to be honest, I have no concrete reason. This feels kind of dumb. Oh God. I am Barney. For a while (10 years ago…) it seemed like everybody had a blog. Then it was just that every Mommy had one, and they were all about recipes and how cute or unique their kids are.

The scary and wonderful part is that anything you write, 140 characters or 600 words, makes you vulnerable. I second-guess many of these posts, publishing and deleting them 10 minutes later. Then I have a little drink and pray that no one saw.  I worry that I’ll offend somebody with an outrageous statement. Or worse, that I’ll bore them with a perfunctory one.

I actually wish more people did this. I love reading real people’s writing, when it hasn’t been edited and sanitized for mass marketing. It’s pretty easy on WordPress or Blogger, people give it a try!

So, why blog?

Remember my love of bulleted lists…

• Because I’ve always loved writing.
• Because my kid loves writing and I want to show her that you can keep enjoying it, for life.
• Because there’s some pretty cool stuff in this world, and blogging gives me the illusion that I get to share it with you.
• Because life is about the connections we make.
• Because we get “Amish TV” (no real cable, on purpose), and House of Cards doesn’t come back to Netflix until February.
• Because I’ve always loved writing.

Oops. I said that last one twice.

Actually? When I was in Kindergarten I was the dead-last kid to learn to tie my shoes. This was humiliating. Nowadays, motor skills like these develop later. I presume this because it is not a standard skill among my first graders.  I have even had 8 year olds asking me to tie their shoes. Spoiler: I did not.  Now ask me if my 7 1/2 year-old is all that good at it…

This past summer I ran across a great blog post from the blog A Magical Childhood, and loved it. “What Should a 4 Year Old Know” was a calming reminder that, though my little one is not reading or writing like my big one was at this age, there are far more important things than a knowledge of the two sounds “G” makes.   I will admit to buying a Pre-K workbook for us to use when we ‘played school’ in the summer.  We cracked it once. Again, we had stuff to do.

Related, I swear, is this gorgeous little book:

Meg’s World (On Amazon here). Written by author/illustrator John Kollock and originally published by Peachtree Publishers in 1970, I have loved this book, I think, forever. Yes I know it’s older than I am. 

In it, 4 year-old Meg explains her week to someone, including the family schedule, and other fun happenings in between. One such event is having company over: “Company does not always want to play what you want them to. Last week I wanted to play gorilla, but Mary wanted to be a fairy tale. You can’t always have your own way, even if you yell. We get the costumes from the big box at the foot of my bed. When you play “dress-up” the company always gets to be the princess or the fairy. This is called manners. I get to be the boy – or the gorilla, when they will play it. After “dress-up” we get out some more toys. Sometimes we remember to put-each-thing-back-in-its-place-when-we-have-finished-playing-with-it.

Sometimes we forget.”

It goes on like that, and gets better. As a former player of He-Man and Ninja Turtles, I totally related to the gorilla thing. In her eyes, Meg stays home each day, not because she’s too young to go to school, but to help her mother with the housework. This mainly consists of trying to vacuum up the cat. There is nothing regular on her family calendar for Wednesdays, so she’s doubts aloud that there is one every week. Mother likes washing dishes so much, that she does them again when Meg is finished her turn. And then there’s this:

Pardon the orange marker stain. Everything in my house has a marker stain.

She is awesome, this kid. I’m so proud that we share a name.  If any 4 year-old is ever this simultaneously carefree and opinionated, their mom and dad can be satisfied with their parenting work thus far. This is the kind of kid that the above blog post is talking about. Secure, creative, and unburdened by, as Kollock puts it in his beautiful little introduction, “the learning process – the discipline of facts – A+ and D-.”

In a high school literature class we were asked to bring in our favorite book. Not trying to be cutesy, but rather to start a discussion on narrative voice and perspective, I unwittingly brought along Meg. Yes, I was 18. I stand by my decision.

Nowadays, as a teacher and parent, I would love to bring it somewhere again, as another type of example.

Because I got your ‘4 Year-Old Curriculum’, right here:

My memory may be failing me in my old age, but I swear to God the person who sat next to me in that lit class brought in Atlas Shrugged.

Don’t worry, I’ve been writing through most of August. There’s more than this.  Maybe even today, if you’re good. This pathetic little paragraph punctuated by dinosaur cartoons is not all I’ve got, so my vast audience of devoted readers need not fear.  The first post on a blog is always a kind of the book dedication, that’s all. Because all bloggers secretly wish for a book deal. And wine. We like wine too.

Writing is fun and gives you a lovely sense of self-importance, so on this blog I’m going to try to produce some witty, insightful content that’s a step away from the traditional “OMG here’s the cutest thing little Raymond said today“ and “Yummy Potato Salad Recipe! Weeeee! ” Hence the site’s title, up there.

So thank you for being here! Thank you for the love you show by reading, commenting, sharing, re-tweeting, doing my laundry, and changing my tire that day I got caught in the rain with a flat. Oh wait, the last two were my husband.

Thank you to my husband for creating this site from the ground up and never rolling your eyes when I would giggle and ask if it could have more “widgets”.

Thank you to family and friends and framily. It’s a word. Here, look it up.

You should really check out the Extreme-Fun-GoodTimes-Party (Blog info/intro) page, Here.

Then you will enjoy the  Bio Page, Here. This is especially useful on the off chance that you don’t actually know the author. (Omigod. That’s me! What a kick!)

Thank you, lastly, for reading more than this post, because I swear: it gets better.