Mockingbird Hill Cottage

Let me clarify my statement on yesterday’s post. I will be posting as usual this week. I’m not taking a week off from blogging, I’m just not doing A Favorite Thing this week. I will be too busy next weekend to visit each linked post and leave a comment and I take that responsibility seriously. We’ll be back up with A Favorite Thing the next week.

Actually, the thought of taking a week off from blogging fills me with a wee feeling of panic. I rely on this daily blogging journal to keep me grounded. I rely on it to keep me sane. Every morning I wake up, pad downstairs to let Scout out, brew some coffee, which I then carry into the den. Scout gets into the ‘tunnel’, I pop open my laptop, check my email, visit a few blogs and then, when I’m sufficiently awake, I start to think about the day’s post. I choose some photos to edit. Often, the theme of the post will spring from the photos. At other times, I have an idea for that post percolating in my head and I go through my photos to find something that will enhance my thoughts for the day or I take some photos right then and there. Either way, the vast majority of my posts evolve from how I feel that day, that morning.

Like today: I’m feeling a little foggy, my head is full of congestion, Don came home unexpectedly yesterday for a couple of days after finding out he had the day off today so my schedule has been thrown off a bit, I’m drinking coffee and wondering why it’s taking me so long to wake up and I woke with the thought that I had to clarify the words I used in yesterday’s post. And so a post begins that evolves into a peek into a my daily blogging ritual.

I count on this ritual to focus my often all-over-the-place thoughts into some sort of coherent narrative. I need that. I don’t know what I did before I blogged.

Well, I do know what I did. I read whatever book I was reading at the time. That was my morning ritual, with a healthy dose of coffee. I still read all the time, as you well know, but the mornings now are a time to read the latest headlines from the New York Times online, visit other blogs and write my post for the day. I usually finish it before Don gets up but not always. Don’s “Are you writing?” has become one of his first questions of the day. Because if I am writing, he doesn’t like to disturb me. The same goes for him. If the guitar is out, I ask “Are you writing a song?” Because I don’t want to disturb the creative process.

Yesterday, when it turned out Don was on his way home, courtesy of another cast member driving back to NYC, we arranged a meeting point where he could be dropped off. I drove 45 minutes or so to get there and amazingly, they pulled up a minute after I did. I was introduced to everyone and Caitlin, whose husband was ferrying everyone home, said Don had showed her my blog and that she loved my photography. That’s gratifying. But what is even more gratifying is that Don regularly touts my blog to everyone he knows – often when I am right there beside him. He gets it. He knows how important this little piece of real estate is to me and how deeply the daily ritual of blogging has become woven into my life.

I don’t know what I would do without it. Truly.

Now, here we are, a post nearly completed, my brain focused, my thoughts put on virtual paper. I’ll edit a bit, think of a title and when I’m sufficiently pleased with it, I’ll hit Publish.

Nine times out of ten, I’ll go back and edit a bit more after I see the post on the page. I’ve been known to edit a post a day or so later if necessary. The other day I noticed I’d used it’s instead of its on a previous post. I went back in and changed it. Once a teacher, always a teacher. Once a perfectionist, almost always a perfectionist. (I’m working on that one.)

What’s your blogging ritual? How has blogging changed your life?

Happy Sunday.