Stuff I Love...: Preservation

When I started this blog last November, I did it because I needed an outlet. My previously very social, very conversational life had changed dramatically into a mostly quiet, mostly alone one. Not PATHETIC alone, just BY MYSELF alone. Which was a totally new and different thing for me. And apparently a necessary one.

(Insert HUGE digression here...)
That makes me think of an MCC song...why can I never find the youtube clips that I need???...anyway, here are the lyrics in case you're NOT one of those people who has random MCC songs floating in your head at any given time of the day or night.

Alone But Not Lonely

I haven't a reason, a clue or a sign
I haven't the slightest idea
Of the shape of your heart or the state of your mind
Do you ever let anyone near?
Do you ever reach out with arms open wide?
Do you ever jump in closing your eyes?
Or are you one of the fortunate kind?
Alone but not lonely

Everyday on the street I study their faces
The ones who rush on through the crowd
Towards their own quiet worlds, their separate places
Somewhere I'm never allowed
'Cause I've always been one to say what I need
And then the next thing it's done and I'm watching 'em leave
And I'm thinking, I wish I could be
Alone but not lonely

So which one are you tonight?
Do you change with the morning light?
Do you say more than what sounds right?
Do you say what you mean?

There are moments in time that are meant to be held
Like fragile, breakable things
There are others that pass us, you can't even tell
Such is their grace and their speed
And this one is gone in the blink of an eye
You can ask me the truth but tonight I will lie
Unflinching I'll tell you that I'm alone but not lonely

(I could write an entire post JUST about that song! AND if I extended my digression to include the whole album...we could be here all day. Time*Sex*Love is my all time favorite MCC album EVER...in case you were wondering.)

OK back to the regularly scheduled post topic...

Over the last six months, this blog has sort of evolved into something different than I originally intended...what started as an outlet has become my journal, my testimony, my "footprints" for future generations. Every day, this blog makes me think more positively about my life. It helps me find something every day to be grateful for. With a title like the one I chose, I can't exactly write about the bad experience I had at the grocery store, or the person who cut me off in traffic. But because I look all day long for Stuff I Love, it keeps those irritating and annoying things from becoming a more significant part of my day.

Last week, when Blogger was down, and I couldn't access the "backstage area" of my blog to write anything new or edit any of my drafts, I panicked a little. Um, ok, that's an understatement...I might have hit REFRESH every 10 minutes for the better part of the day and night (and a couple of times from my DROID in the middle of the night) and the next day until accessibility returned and all was right with the world again. I wasn't so much obsessed because I couldn't write anything. My panic came from the thought that I might not be able to access it at all...like EVER. I spent way too much time Googling that night and reading about people whose blogs had been hacked into, or who had been mistakenly deactivated by some blogging host, only to find that ALL of their posts were GONE forever. I've spent a LOT of time on these posts. There are things in this blog (both published and drafted) that I want to remember and that I eventually want my children to have access to. I'm intimately acquainted with every single word I've written and I revisit them often. So the thought of losing any or all of it made me panic A LOT.

Since this week has been mostly rescheduled time at home, I spent Harry Potter Day Googling ways to go from blog form to print form. There are several amazing companies who will take your blog (with just the URL) and convert it into not just a printed document, but a hard cover, professionally bound BOOK with color pictures!! The problem with those companies, for me, though, is #1. COST (prolific isn't cheap) and #2. organizational freedom. I couldn't get the page breaks where I wanted them. I couldn't get the pictures where I wanted them. And this blog isn't the only place I write stuff.

I have been a journal keeper since I was a little girl. I have life experiences, first boyfriends, great birthday parties, really bad days at school...I wrote all of it...good and bad, embarrassing and uplifting. I have quotes and poems and SONG LYRICS that have moved me for whatever reason. I have sketches of buildings I drew when I thought I wanted to be an architect. (One of those buildings looks remarkably like a Temple and was drawn LONG before I even knew what a Temple was.) I have Christmas lists and resolutions that I made in the 80s! I have notes from Conferences and Education Week classes. I write constantly! My desk is currently littered with scribbles of things on hundreds of little pieces of paper.

The thought of gathering all those things into ONE place...or at least several organized volumes...has been hounding me for days. What if I didn't do that and something happened to my blog? What if I didn't do that and something happened to ME!? Even my husband couldn't begin to piece all those scribbles together into anything that made sense. And my children would just think I was some kind of obsessive genius freak (only minus the genius part.)

But today I figured it out! I have spent the better part of the morning copying each individual post from the "backstage area" of my blog into a Word file. I have all the organizational freedom I need to move things around and edit wherever I want to. And I have the ability to insert other "writings, drafts and scribbles" between some of the printed posts.

Now I just need...