True Confessions of a Somewhat New Blogger

Alright, alright, I must admit that I love this blog world. As my husband can attest, (and I may as well admit since these are in fact "true confessions") I get almost giddy about things associated with my, well alright, OUR blog (eventhough it really is mine). Not in a I'm going to take the time to decorate my blog with clever borders and headings way, because, as many of you know all too well, I stink at decorating of all sorts. Once, I was asked to be on the decorating committee for an Enrichment activity. It was not a pretty site. Trust me.

No indeed, decorating my blog is not something I have found excitement in (yet anyways...I may have to start because my blog is constantly being put to shame by all you clever and creative blog decorators). Instead, I get giddy when I come up with a new post idea. I sit there brainstorming in my head for days and occasionally Derek can catch me laughing to myself and he'll ask what I'm laughing about. I just say, "I was thinking of a really great blog post." He shakes his head in amazement at my dorkiness, and I continue brainstorming in my head.

I get giddy when I finally do post that great blog idea I've been brainstorming about and all of you write comments. I once described to Derek how I feel when I am clicking on the link to my blog shortly after posting something new. Honestly, as I am scrolling down to see what kind of comments you guys have left, it is a somewhat similar feeling to the night before your first day of school. My stomach gets butterflies and the end of that post with the all to familiar link to the comments page cannot appear soon enough. I think, when I admitted this to Derek, he questioned whether in some part of this eternity that he has agreed to with me he would ever be less embarrassed by my oddness.

I find it all quite funny actually. Before I finally broke down and started a blog of my own, I had many friends tell me that I needed to join the world of blogging. I always tossed it aside as something too juvenile for me. "What is blogging?" I would ask. "Is that something like MySpace?" All I knew about MySpace was that it was something my younger sister and all her friends were into. And, it didn't seem like something I wanted to be part of. I was more grown-up than that.

As many of you also may know, I am terrible at keeping in touch. I long to have long-lasting friendships, but yet I struggle to keep in touch. For example, take the Christmas card thing. It sounds like such a novel idea, a great way to let everyone know that you still exsist even though you've moved to Oregon and sacrificed your life to PA school. However, I can't seem to put together a Christmas card. Maybe some year. One year I will send Christmas cards and you will all be shocked and amazed. I was joking with someone the other day that sending out a Christmas card might be too big of a starting goal for me. Christmas is a busy time of year afterall with all the shopping and traveling to visit family and such. It may be smarter for me to send September cards. Nothing happens in September. I could more likely handle September cards.

I have never been great at emailing. It's should be so easy. People even email me. All I would have to do is hit reply and type a few sentences, but that can sometimes be a very daunting task for me. How much do I tell them? What should I not tell them? How does it look to someone if they email you and you email them back that very same day? I always figure the person thinks geez, "Chelsea must have nothing to do but sit around and wait for my emails so she can email me back." Like I'm all too eager and starving for an email or something. But, if I don't email right away, that person's email gets lost in the world of my inbox, and I totally forget to write back. This is what usually happens. Plus, writing to multiple people I start to feel like I am repeating my life over and over. I get to the point where I have memorized the most recent life events in fable form that I just repeat quickly over and over for anyone who asks what I've been up to. It reminds me of those "tall tales" that get passed down from generation to generation only I pass them down from friend to friend to family member and so on. Each time I tell it, it gets stretched just a little more to make it more and more entertaining probably more so for myself than anyone else.

Anyways, when I began this year of my clinical rotations, I finally decided I should try out this "blog" thing. People were always asking me to tell them about intersting things I came across in the clinic, and frankly, I got tired of telling the same stories over and over again. Lexie found me the cartoon I posted above. She said it totally reminded her of me and my blog. And it made me realize how much I love this blog. I love that I can post what I've been up to and let everyone who cares to know all at once. I have almost entirely cut out emails (Thank goodness!) Although, as I confessed earlier, I wasn't very good at writing emails before anyways. Plus, I get to keep in touch with all my friends who have blogs as well. I feel like I totally know what is going on in so many of your lives, and I love it! I know without the blog world that really would not be possible. I just couldn't keep up with that many people (I am incapable as I discussed earlier). Anyways, I know Thanksgiving is long gone, but today I am grateful for the blog world and the way it saves me from guilt by not being able to keep in touch with all of you and the way it keeps me out of the habbit of telling tall tales (well, sort of).