Home By Another Way

I've been thinking about my blog a lot lately.

  

I want to find the right balance.

I want it to be pretty, and I also want it to be honest.

Is it honest if I don't share all that is going on with me at the time?  Do I need to explain the history, give the back-story that gets me to what I am writing about?  Does the back-story help people get close to me, or not? Sometimes I wonder . . .

Part of my history & back-story, anyway.  

I started blogging after discovering Artful Blogging magazine. The issue I bought had Heather's Pretty Petals blog.  It inspired me and really touched a chord.  That led to reading other amazing blogs; attending Silver Bella; making art & taking photos I'm proud of.

A month after I started blogging, Heather hosted  "A pretty little Christmas" blog party of Christmas decorations.  I joined in.

 

  My post was beautiful, but terribly ironic.

I didn't decorate for Christmas that year, I wasn't doing very well emotionally and all I could manage were close-ups of pretty things.  The bigger picture was a mess!

 

Suzanne did a post about blogging close-up and the messy bigger picture.  She wrote, (and I wish I had written it), " . . . every time I show you a close up of my life, just remember…that there is a bigger picture…and it’s far from perfect!"

When I started blogging, I was still healing from some painful emotional losses.  Some days getting out of bed was a real accomplishment. So there were things in my life I didn't write about.  And since then there have been other things I didn't want to write about.

Life is so much better for me these days.  I will probably never write about the things that were so painful.  But just writing this post has helped me to sort out what it means to be authentic. I don't have to tell all to be honest, and I don't have to explain every little thing to be authentic.