A few months ago after I first heard about ‘The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks’ the author, Bethany, indicated that she was looking for readers to vote for her in some online poll. The top competitor was this woman Kristy, who writes a blog called "She Just Walks Around With It." I went to the site and cast my vote, then decided to check out this competing blog.

Well, over the last few months I think I have read almost all of Kristy’s archives, and I check in with her blog several times a week. It’s like a never-ending book that you can’t put down.

As the Princess Bride so accurately put it: "Let me explain. No, there is too much; let me sum up."

Kristy posted an entry on Saturday about the backstory of losing her mother to cancer. Then someone posted a negative, anonymous, comment about a choice that Kristy made. Today there were 57(!) response comments supporting Kristy, & flaming the poster. You really should read it all for yourself. But the number of stories in those comments about daughters and moms, about losses suffered and mistakes made brought me to tears.

When I started blogging in the fall, I wasn’t sure exactly what my purpose was. While I told myself that a blog would be a great vehicle for people to keep up with our family, I had a horrible fear that the posts could become horribly self-congratulatory; like a really bad holiday letter. I still think it’s a really slippery slope.

Since I turned 30 or so I’ve often said/joked: "I’m 30-x years old, and I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up." While there’s a lot of truth in this, I think what I really want is to be comfortable enough in my own skin to not always seek myself in the approval of others.

On my good days I think I’m pretty funny, but I feel like I’m struggling to be articulate. I write well, but not effortlessly. I easily overwhelm myself with my insecurities about so many things. But maybe, like Kristy, I will get to the point in my life that this blog is really for myself, not for other people. And that I will be secure enough that I can share so much more than the banal day-to-day minutiae of my life, and grow and learn from it. And not let the opinions of others define what I think of myself.

And maybe I’ll even post some of the spoof holiday letters that Ward and I have written for our own amusement over the last two years.

Maybe. Just maybe.