Helping my girl set up a blog.

Through starting this blog and encouraging others to write their story, or to at least tell it in some way…I’ve ended up encouraging my oldest daughter to start thinking of starting her own blog.

Granted she’s only 15 so that has some unique issues for me to consider. But wow, I’m excited to read what she writes. I’m even just excited to see what theme and name and style choices she makes. She’s so unique. And that’s the beauty of blogging…you can set it up however it best fits your personality. Where my style tends to lean towards classic and basic, her’s I know will be fashionable and colorful:).

In the process of her thinking it through she’s having to decide what direction she even wants her blog to go in.

It helps to have a direction, a main focus, a main purpose. Most blogs do. Some blogs are full of humor, or pictures, stories about their kids. Some blogs are for leadership or some other business type endeavor and direction. Some blogs are about authors who are in the process of writing and who are trying out a few of the main themes on their audience. Some blogs are about coupon savings, or some other useful thing. There is no end to what your blog could be about, but it should be something that you care about.

I have three blogs. One is completely letters to my kids. One is completely about preparing for my sabbatical next year and this one is completely devoted to telling your story.

Once you have a direction in which to go it makes the writing a whole lot easier. And once you have a direction, you start to notice stuff in your daily life to write about that fits in with the theme of your blog.

Lauren isn’t sure how often she will post. She knows it won’t be as much as I do. And that’s completely fine:).

I think she will be amazed as she looks back over time how her story expands and becomes something incredibly beautiful.

I kind of wish I had been blogging since my teenage years. Even six years of blogging history seems huge to me…but 20 years…now that would be remarkable. Especially during all of those twists and turns of high school and college, marriage and early parenting years!

Lauren is really mature for her age. I wouldn’t necessarily suggest all teenagers to start a blog. But I know with Lauren she won’t be about drama. Honestly, she has some pretty great insight. I will be a regular blog reader:). I told her just today…”Lauren, you are one of my best friends.” She just smiled.

This weekend I will probably sit down with her and help her set up a wordpress blog. I know there are many options for hosting a blog but this is the one I’m most familiar with. She’s working right now to come up with a title and I’m sure she’ll have a great time getting it all set up.

How about you? If you have a blog already what was it like for you when you set it all up? How did you choose a site to host your blog?

I can tell you…it’s a very easy process and free. Before you know it you’ll be ready to start blogging and that’s when the real fun begins.

 Like I said…Lauren’s story will be full of color and style:)

Time

One of the main roadblocks to anything good in our lives is that we tend to feel we don’t have the time.

Maybe it’s an issue of not feeling like we have the time to do it as perfect as we would like to. Most of us have some perfectionist leanings to some degree.

I can appreciate the fact that you don’t want to just slap something down and call it good when you’re telling your story. No story deserves that kind of treatment. At least that’s how I feel.

In this day and age when we have constant internet access, phones on us all the time, communication from work 24/7 it seems and places to go with our kids and our own social things it’s hard to feel that there is time to add one more thing.

I think that’s why getting ready to take this sabbatical is such a big deal to me. I will have the time I’ve been clamoring after for so long now.

We make choices don’t we. Everyday. We make choices of what time to set our alarm for. How much time to spend on the get ready routine. We make choices about how long we’ll spend on the computer killing time. We make choices about how precise our homes need to be kept. We make choices about the activities we get our family involved in. We make choices about church involvement. We make choices about how long we’ll spend in the kitchen and basically pretty much all day long, we make choices.

A few years back I had a good friend, Hillary. She talked to me about some of the choices she was making. She told me about the reality that her home is never really thoroughly clean but that she’s decided it’s ok and not worth the bother. She would rather take the time to fit in some healthy choices for herself. So she bikes, runs, enters races, etc. She knew that between the two, having a spotless home or a healthy body she would rather have a healthy body.

I at the time…was choosing the spotless house. Ok my house wasn’t actually spotless but I was working at it every weekend and feeling so frustrated week by week when the “clean” house never lasted long, or so it seemed. I told her I didn’t have time for exercise…but the reality is, I was making a choice. It seems that I cared more about the care of my house than about my own body.

That’s changed. I now prioritize a few other things over a clean house and have learned to lower my standard a bit.

When it comes to telling our story, to blogging, or letter writing, or a phone call, or however you choose to do it, it would be easy to feel that there is no time for that kind of thing.

But…I hope to challenge that assumption if you have it. I hope to encourage you that your story is so amazing that if the world doesn’t have it, we will be missing something significant.

How much time does it really take to regularly put yourself out there and tell your story a bit. A picture is worth a thousand words:).

I would never encourage you to spend hours a day writing and editing and pouring yourself over a blog post like you would a published book. That would be crazy.

I don’t think it’s even so important that your story presentation has a ‘finished’ quality to it. I think the main thing is just doing something. And if possible, on a regular basis.

Post a picture, post a quote that is speaking to you, a bible verse. Share a short piece of yourself in one paragraph.

I believe that you could incorporate telling your story in some form or fashion in a couple minutes a day if you wanted to keep it that simple.

Facebook posts are better than nothing. But…if you were blogging you could actually keep all of your story in one place, you could easily look back and see where you were a year ago, what you were doing and feeling and you could see how far you’ve come. Your kids could see it too. You might be surprised at the shape of your story in ways that you will never see on a Facebook page.

Some of you, many of you are such gifted photographers. Post your work, let us see behind your eyes to see what you saw when you took the picture. Some of you are great with poetry, write a line or two. Some of you are humorous and can tell a great story…make us laugh. Some of you are walking dark roads and we don’t even know it because we don’t know your story, but if we knew we could offer some light.

My friend Hillary was right. There are some things in our lives that really don’t matter all that much. We have to figure out what does matter.

I think telling your story should fall somewhere into the what does matter slot. Even if it’s a sentence…even if it’s one picture. Over time the multiplication of your commitment to telling your story will astound you.

When you make the time to start telling your story…this is what happens, you start living a larger story automatically. It’s a natural reaction. If I know I’m going to tell others about my story, than I’m sure to actually be intentional about living a story worth telling.

I would love to read your story. Feel free to leave me the address to your blog if you choose to start one:).