For a while I’ve been thinking about this change. At first I thought I would best like to have a home page, welcoming folks in with a wonderful quote or two which would rotate and provide variety. But, um, I didn’t keep that up so well.

The reality is, I’m blogging here. I’m not a persona with a website. It’s fun to have pages listing examples of my published writing, but basically my “home” work is to update semi-regularly. I plan to keep doing so. I think this arrangement reflects that better.

Thanks for your patience with me in many ways! You’re nice readers, you.

Learning, as I dip into Orthodox practices during the season they call Great Lent, that the idea here is to keep the process simple, my usual distractions at arm’s length.

And so there is a fast from certain foods. Meat and dairy, oil and wine. Yummies we tend to use to adorn the basic grains, veggies, and fruits.

The Orthodox focus more, perhaps, on doing different than on giving up.

Which can be just as risky.

A priest with eyes that twinkle said to me the other day, “This can be a fun ride.” I’m finding in my heart some agreement.

Another little ride I’m taking involves linking to a group called The High Calling. I found them thanks to Deb Colarossi. Her lovely blog Talk at the Table as often melts the heart as intrigues the mind. Even its URL, “forsaken for lent,” carries artistry and a challenge to me to continue thinking. High calling. High church. Hm.

Then again, I feel a lot lately like a child crouched behind the lowliest shrub along a dusty path. Not really hiding. Sort of waiting. For the procession. For someone walking past, teaching a ragtag assortment of folks trying to grasp his message.

His eyes, I’m guessing, can look so sad. I’ll bet they also gleam like universes.

I gain a lot from them, throughout the year, as I revel in second-hand experiences of knitting, crafting, cooking, shopping, raising chickens, and so on. Since it’s now, and they’re there, I’d like to tip my hat to these hardy bloggers.

Last November–a year ago today, in fact–I went to a job interview for Managing Editor at Midwifery Today, a national magazine based here in Eugene. The week leading up to that Monday had been a blur. I’d noticed the job on Craigslist and then revved into high gear, polishing up a resume and soliciting referrals. It was the first outside-the-home employment to catch my interest in a long while.

Writing and I were a little burnt out with each other.

I parked near the MT office, a converted mobile home, and tripped up the front steps 15 minutes early. I was ushered past friendly faces in the front office to a sagging, comfy sofa near a tiny kitchen. A roly-poly chocolate lab greeted and kept me company whilst I tried to sit up straight and keep my wits. I had no chance at this position, no great experience, just that editorship for a pregnancy center newsletter way back when. But I had to try, because I could. I’d been invited. The doggy kept reassuring me it was fine.

I loved every moment, speaking with Jan, the publisher, and another staff person. They liked me. Sunshine came in the window and made me sweat. I imagined heading into the back office to learn their routine, and I posited my schedule with 20 hours here a week, plus however many more it would take me at home. It was way over my head. It was all a rush.

On the way out the door, after the receptionist said goodbye, I answered, “Good night.” Good grief. It was only noon.

Jan called me the day before Thanksgiving to let me know she’d hired someone else. She had loved me, she said, but the next five people in the door carried far more experience in their briefcases.

Though a year ago I was disappointed, today I’m grateful I didn’t get the job. In February a nonprofit group hired me for 10 hours or so a week, and my training and actual experience have been invaluable so far. Best, there are times available in which to think. Some days I can even write while waiting for clients. There’s every-morning essaying at home before work or whatever’s on my schedule. And I can share our car, for now, with my daughter, until she buys her own.

Writing and I are easier bedfellows today, though we still have our off-moments. While I’ve worked on this blog post, a rejection has arrived. I guess I often try for acceptance above my head, and someone with more to offer is often preferred. Probably again it’s nothing personal.

I guess we do those things we were made to, and we pursue the stuff that, just maybe, we were destined for. Even burnt out or disappointed, giving it a good go bestows fun and that love, that rush. For this I do my best to keep giving thanks.

I started writing posts on a Blogger blog four years ago.

This morning, my WordPress dashboard tells me this is my 200th post.

Since I began the work of educating myself to write more often and better, I have found some publishment in print and online. I’ve received much encouragement from friends, especially during bouts of steady rejection. I have become just techy enough to obsess over blog and website details.

Mostly, though, I’ve had fun.

Now I feel on the brink of new steps in this writing journey. (When haven’t I?)

Liking it here.

Deanna planted a seed for this post by suggesting I might write my “blogging story.” Here ’tis.

“Our challenge is to edit Life’s choices, but not too carefully, and to remain fully awake in each moment to precious possibility.”

Those words were the final sentence of my very first blog post. The year was 2003. It was September, and the cable television news stations were full of candidate profiles for the upcoming 2004 elections. I remember listening with one ear while I cooked supper.

“. . . and the candidate’s spouse is keeping an online web log of campaign events.”

I put down a mixing spoon and sprinted into the living room.

“Buck! What did that reporter say?” My husband tried to explain, but I kept interrupting him.

“No — I mean that word. What was that word?”

Naturally, he thought I had (once again) taken leave of my senses. He has seen that look in my eye before! I went back into the kitchen, muttering to myself. “Web log. Web log. What on earth is that? I’m going to look it up.”

Dial-up internet service was still a minor miracle, so it took me a little while to get the full scoop on web logs, which had not yet fully morphed into blogs. Once I did, I was riveted by the concept.

The impetus for me to start a blog was curiosity, plain and simple. I had no training in http (hypertext transfer protocol) and blog templates were not nearly so seamless to create in 2003. Then, as now, one of the great rewards of blogging is that it forces us to learn constantly, and to reach beyond our initial grasp.

The first time I pushed the “publish now” button, I didn’t really believe it would work. It was exciting to see my post, called “Lunch Hour,” on the screen. But when my first commenter posted, that’s what set me on fire. It was a one-word comment: “Amen.” By following the link, I was able to find his blog and learn how to create a blog roll. Then, I was off to the races, finding and linking up with other pioneers in this wonderful new world.

Since that first blog post, I have pursued writing like a dog worrying a bone. There are days, even months, where I forget where I buried it for awhile. But I always come back. It wasn’t until 2008 that I realized I had written a lot of words, and that maybe some of them had “the stuff” to be polished and published. That realization started another chapter in my life. For the first time, I began to think of myself as a writer, and it made me incredibly happy.

My first published story was based on a blog post. My blog doesn’t attract hordes of readers, but like good friends in the real world, you don’t need many like-minded, genuine folks to form a meaningful community. It’s a writer’s learning lab for our small circle, and a great source of warm fuzziness that brightens my days and nights.

The blog archives are maintained with the help of “cloud” computing back-ups, so that anytime I want to pull out the files and explore old pathways of my life, the material is there: words, photographs, and even several videos — a multi-dimensional scrapbook of memoir raw material. Whenever I feel a writing dry spell coming on, the years of blog posts are like some great steaming compost pile of ideas and themes.

You can find the second blog post I ever published at Switched At Birth by clicking here. It was posted on September 19, 2003. It still breaks my heart a little to think of how four good friends broke their relationship and were never, like Humpty-Dumpty, able to put it back together again.

Thanks for reading — and thanks again, Deanna, for the invitation to “guest blog.”

I’m happy as peaches to have this chronicle of a writer/blogger’s beginning. Here’s more about her:

Elizabeth Westmark’s essays have appeared in Brevity Magazine, Prick of the Spindle, Camroc Press Review, and Dead Mule, among others. She maintains two story-telling/memoir blogs, a food blog, and a microessay blog from her home in a Longleaf pine preserve near Pensacola, Florida, where she is writing the memoir of a small forest, essays, and short stories.

Thanks, Beth!

Fresca did a post, here, about comments on blogs and one here about the blog rolls that many bloggers (including myself) set up in their sidebars. She’s posed extensive thoughts on how this blog phenomena has been expanding and evolving. If you’re interested in such stuff, it’s recommended reading, especially along with the comments people have left, sharing their own perspectives. A lot of thoughts are and will be thunk about this 21st Century activity.

What I enjoyed most about the ideas in Fresca’s posts is a sort of ditty that popped into my brain after reading them. Not wishing to pressure those dear “lurkers” who are fine with simply reading blogs, this is for those of us who like to participate in our quirky community:

To keep blithe blogger buds happy,
send a few comments their way.
Like crumbs in the park for a birdie,
your responses will brighten their day.

:o)

Last weekend I decided to try writing things ahead and then utilizing the blog’s “schedule post” feature so they would magically appear, as if predestined.

This has been a trial run but not a trial. I’ve kinda liked it. Schedules in my world are always for flexing, but this one may last a while.

Also this week I finished an essay. After long months of existence in various forms, it became ready to send out. Not that I hadn’t already sent it, receiving rejection upon rejection in return. But now I know it’s better, stronger, having received confirmation from a professional, whose good critiquing service I availed myself to.

Lisa Ohlen Harris is an amazing writer. Her essays have been published in numerous journals (she even knows which journals are respectable enough to warrant a try at publication). She has received recognition in Best American Essays 2009 and Best Spiritual Writing 2010. What I care about, though, is her awesome editing and teaching skill. She even blogs now, too, and you can read her posty expressions here.

Well, I’m off, for a weekend of sleeping in (possibly till 7:00, whoo hoo!), treadmilling, even going outside to breathe deeply near the river, and jotting thoughts in my notebook before the start of another working-at-it, word-filled week.

But I do still prefer “capturing a story’s glimmer,” because it’s a goal of sorts. In the practice of this life and craft I am motivated by seeking to let the stories near me shine. There are some beauties.

I have been built, it seems, to appreciate (at least to want to appreciate) hints of glory in stuff that’s going on. I see this life, everyone’s life, as part of the story God is writing. Despite the tragic, horrific parts, I am trusting it’s a good tale, because I trust the author. We won’t know for certain till the final chapter, will we?

But meanwhile I’d like to point out the marvelous passages I find. They clue me in to what might be coming. Like the song of waters off the mountains, they reassure me there is goodness in store.

Today the heat probably broke a temperature record. Will it be our last hot hot day of the year?

Will, a good friend of my son, James, leaves this week for college far away. Today Will’s mom, Shelley, and I chatted in the shade out at their country home, while her dogs wrestled in the dust nearby. Our lives transition as our sons, somehow, have changed from pudgy, Pokemon-crazy kids into tall young men.

I finished an essay draft today. Now it can rest while I begin a new piece of writing tomorrow.

This week I may flub the sending-two-things-out goal. I want to make it, to cast about for something, anything in my files and fling it toward an editor. Will the editor appreciate this?

Tim hates the heat.

Fortunately for Tim, the transmitter site he worked at today was a few miles from the beach, over at the cool coast.

Tim just phoned. Now back in town, he gets to fix the TV station’s air conditioner (it always blinks out on hot days) and then he plans to ride home on his bike, after things cool down.

So I’ll see him in the wee hours, when I get up tomorrow, I suppose.

I don’t think I’m especially good at these listy updates.

My inspiration, though, came from a book by Emily Smucker, age 19, titled Emily. I got to chat with Emily and her mom, Dorcas, recently at their home. Since then I’ve read Emily’s book and am reading the newest one by Dorcas. The daughter’s pages, many compiled from her blog, tell the story of her struggle with West Nile Virus, using honesty, style, and well-done random lists. I highly recommend it.

Last Saturday the Smucker authors gave a talk and book signing at Barnes and Noble. A crowd filled the aisles and clogged the magazine area. Emily’s books sold out, and the ones by Dorcas, titled Downstairs the Queen is Knitting, almost did.

I brought my camera.

A Barnes and Noble employee asked if I’d like to be in a shot, and I eagerly agreed.