2009 Blog Book Arrived!

A few weeks ago, my friend Patty mentioned that she decided to have her blog posts compiled into a book. What a wonderful idea! I have often thought that I should have a hard copy of this blog just in case something happened to it online. I mean how secure is cyberspace anyway? What if the Internet suddenly disappeared? Okay, not likely. But what if Google somehow lost all my posts? Anyway, I thought it would be good to have something physical, but the idea of printing the entire blog and compiling all the pages was way too daunting a task to even consider.

Fortunately, I didn't have to.

This company called blog2print did it for me. It was so easy. All I did was log on to the site and enter my blog address. I chose a color (red, of course) and pictures for both the front and back covers. They quoted me a price, I paid it, and this lovely book containing all seventy 2009 blog posts, complete with pictures and comments, arrived two weeks later. I am impressed. I believe I will do this every year.

Next came the anxiety. No wait, the fear. No wait, the TERROR! I have to read the blog in hard copy print. WHAT IF I FIND ERRORS? Ack! When I skim through my former posts electronically, I make changes all the time. I tweak a phrase here; I edit a clause there. I trim wordiness wherever I can. Always, always, writing can be improved. But not anymore, at least not with the hard copy edition of my blog. I can no longer edit. And that's hard for me. In the depth of my soul, I am an editor.

In the comfort of my bed, with pillows propped up all around and a Diet Coke on the nightstand, I took a deep breath, faced my fear, and read the book cover to cover. Believe it or not, I didn't find a single error. That doesn't mean no errors exist; it just means I didn't see any. Which is all that matters, right? -- because I'm the only one who cares. What I did find was a year of glorious experiences, memories, thoughts (both sad and happy), friends, family, vacations, holidays and more, woven together in a series of essays. Much of it I had forgotten. It was fun to read it all again.

I am thankful to have discovered blogging as a creative outlet. I'm even more thankful that I can finally follow the age-old counsel to record something of our family history. I've never been good at keeping a journal. Writing daily about events seems boring because my life, day to day, isn't all that interesting. I recently read a blog whose author called herself an essayist. I think that's what I am. Yes, I'm an essayist. I love to write, but I need a focus, a theme, a central idea in order to make it work. I'm happy to have found the ideal medium for that.

So to all of you who read and even sometimes comment here, thank you. I love to know that people are reading.

Now for the next hurdle. Gerald suggested taking a picture of me holding the blog book to post with this entry. Good idea? Yes! But that means I have to take a good picture. Blah. We've now taken 12 pictures, and I like NONE of them. I look either frightened, frumpy, fat, or 40+. Blech! Thank goodness Gerald is a patient photographer. We'll keep trying, and if you see a picture with this post, you'll know we finally succeeded in taking one I could live with.

Vanity. Is that one of the seven deadly sins? If so, I think I'm doomed.