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I’ve had this on a post-it note on top of my desk for a couple of days. I read about it on one of the 105 blogs that I’m reading daily. ‘Though I have to admit that the question may have occurred to me without help once or twice. Yesterday I took a pen and wrote beneath it:

WHY NOT?

I am claiming my blog back.

I’ve been feeling a little down with the blog and the not-making music enough and the no-more-shrinking lately. (The reading of 105 blog feeds and the daily watching of two episodes of “Buffy, the Vampire-Slayer” may be a reason for this unproductive phase.) I felt all full of self-pity, constantly thinking, “Nobody wants to read my blogs, why am I doing this?” Each morning I open my stats before even checking my inbox and I go like, “Oh, only six hits!”. What I keep forgetting is that:

1. While it is true that I do have two blogs, they are only mirroring each other. Same content, different language. So I might feel better if I didn’t see them as separate. So it’s not six hits, but twelve.
2. Of course people won’t come to my blog daily, when I’m posting only two or three times a week.
3. What I’m blogging about is not very mainstream.
4. I’m not the world’s best writer. Especially not in English.
5. There are hundreds of fantabulous bloggers out there. If I were not me, I’d probably read them and not me too.

Well, with me there always has to be a but, so here it is: If I were not me, maybe I wouldn’t care about the writing style or anything, if there were another blogger writing about the topics that are dear to my heart. In all my struggling with being creative on the side while parenting, cleaning, exercising, teaching and what not, I’d like to see other mothers like me. I’d love to read all about it and about the, “How do you do it?”

Of course I ‘d like to have lots and lots of readers. And I’m working on bettering the blog. So I’m reading copyblogger and problogger and Liz Strauss and Creating passionate users. I even subscribed to an eCourse to better my blog. This course has left me thinking. All of these resources are geared towards professional bloggers. They help you to make money from your blog. ‘Though I’d love to be paid for all the work I’m doing here, I don’t think this will happen in the near future. (Not with six plus six readers anyway.)

This blog is not a “product”. I’m writing what I’d like to read. This is why I’ve gone back to the “essay-format” that I started in. This is why I’m not blogjolting anymore. I love the thought of a group of bloggers helping each others and recommending each others, but I won’t point people towards other blogs only because somebody told me so.

I found that I enjoy bloggers more, who maybe don’t post daily but when they so they have something to say. Like Martina Kink or Jori DesJardins. I like bloggers who write about creativity and struggles and are authentic. Like Christine Kane. Finding her blog almost stopped me writing mine. She does it so much better than me. But this is like in music. It’s not about being the best. There’s room for a lot of bloggers. Even for a lot of bloggers not on the top 100 technocrati ranks. Even for bloggers with a ranking of about 660,000. (I’m flabbergasted! I just went to technocrati to look up my ranking and instead of 660,000 something, I’m 260,062. Or “Diapers and Music” is. “Windeln und Musik” just sank down from 880,000ish to 1,000,000ish.)

This would be even worth it if I only wrote it for the three of my friends who are reading this. But I like having six plus six readers. And I’m trying to get more. But I won’t spend my time to worry about readers and about my posting schedule and then become the member of yet another blogger network just to gain readers. And I know that the German blogging scene is a little smaller than the American one. And from what I read on other people’s blogs their blog taste is quite different from mine. Short posts about three times a day. Of course there is a lot of the “And then I had coffee and then I went to the mall and then I watched TV variety of blogging. Which I enjoy only if it is written extremely well.

Technorati Tags: blogger, blogging, thinking

Things I did last week that I never had done before:

• ordered a bra online,
• after undressing I put my underwear and socks directly into the trash can (full of holes),
• ate nothing for 26 hours, though I wasn’t sick,
• had a coloscopy (and everything is fine, thank you),
• spontaneously played the intro to “Nothing Else Matters” to a student on the guitar, ‘though I don’t know how,
• had a guitar lesson myself while growing tipsier and tipsier (Well, my husband is teaching me.),
• sold the stroller and the tricycle,
• made a budget and compared it to our actual expenses (Well, I didn’t say that we actually stayed within the budget.),
• lost 4 pounds in one day (The not eating might do this to you. Don’t try this at home! (And they’re back on anyway.)),
• took my laptop with me to the big city and wrote a blog post while sitting in a café (Next time I’ll take my husband’s backpack instead of my more stylish but wrecking my shoulder laptop bag.)
• sold one of my computer games online
• signed up for a free eCourse on blogging (Thank you, Wendy Piersall.)

Well, the ones of you that are actually following this blog might have wondered, when I’d write the post on “do what you want or surrender” that I mentioned a couple of days weeks ago. So, here it is:

When I was about twelve years old I got a book that deeply impressed me: “The Neverending Story” by Michael Ende. For those of you who don’t remember, that’s a fantastic story about a boy entering a magical land of fairy. He gets a medaillon with the inscription: “Do what you want.” At first he thinks what nearly everyone would be thinking that it’s all about getting everything he fancies. But because this is a book for young readers, of course there’s a moral to it, and in the end it’s about doing what you really want. With all of the consequences.

I thought about that a lot. Since then I’ve been in the habit of asking myself several times a day, if I really want what I’m doing. And if it will lead me ultimately into the direction I want my life to be heading.

In spite of the gap that lies between my knowing and my doing this helped me for example never to start smoking: I was about 13 years old, standing in a park with a herd of teenagers, holding a cigarette in my hand, because smoking was so cool then. I stopped and thought, “Do I really want to do this?” No, I didn’t, so I extinguished the half-smoked cigarette and never did it again.

“Do what you want.” helped me not to study business studies like everybody else did. And later after university it helped me not to become a computer programmer.

So it is a very helpful thought. You stop, you think about the relationship between your deeds and your ultimate goal, and it helps feeling powerful, because you know that it was your own decision.

Only that I started thinking again. I’m going all new agey hear. Maybe it’s not all about what I want. (Something a mother can’t stop thinking.) Maybe there’s a bigger plan. Maybe God is trying to lead me and I’m constantly struffling against it? (Okay, here it is, the G-word. Sorry.)

So, while I didn’t stop asking myself, “Do I really want to do this?” (I even started changing my doing accordingly.), I’m relaxing a little. Pray for guidance and help. And, you know, my life has become just a little bit easier. I don’t have to do it all on my own.

Wow.

I should have this tattooed on my forehead! Not, because kissing is always good (well, with the right person anyway), but because this is an acronym for “Keep It Simple, Stupid!”.

I read about this as part of the latest blogjolt. I looked around Angel Copes‘ blog 1smartmom, and found this, which lead me here, to Robyn Tippins‘ blog Inside Motherhood.

So they both remind me that I can’t really do it all at once. Between the parenting and the housework and the teaching and the blog and the music, no wonder that there is no time for friends or anything else. But what do I skip? Right now about the only thing really expendable is the blog, I’m afraid. But do not fear, I’ll keep it for yet another while.

Technorati Tags: blogjolt, motherhood

This weeks “joltees” are quite interesting again. (Oh, if you don’t know, what a blogjolt is, look here.) The first is Rebecca living and crafting in Ireland. What I love about her blog – apart from the beautiful things she makes – is that she lets her readers see into her creative process. And imagine doing so many things.

The other one to be jolted is one of the fabulous ClubMom bloggers. I immediately bookmarked Kelly’s blog “blended, with salt”, when I saw the line about “raising a teenager and a toddler”. Phew.

Off you go, read fabulous things.

I haven’t been watching a lot of TV lately. For one thing there’s not that much interesting to watch and for the other TV is something that I try to cut back on, so that I can spend my time more wisely. And tv is an energy sucker. Like a vampire it can suck the life force out of you, unless you hang in front of it, unable to get up and go to bed, or even to turn it off.

I know, because there have been times when I spent my entire day in front of the tube, hopping from one sitcom to the other. My husband dreaded the sound of canned laughter coming out of the living room, where I supposedly worked on my dissertation. While this was an excellent way to procrastinate, I then set up my newly built study in a way that forbid watching tv while working. And it served me well, work is going better without tv. (And then there came the internet and blogs…)

But as I said, I haven’t been watching a lot of tv lately. The only thing I have been looking forward to is “Buffy the vampire slayer”. Every week I’d tape the latest episode or two and then the next day I’d sit in down in front of the tv and enjoy my funny horror teen show. I’m not quite sure, why I like it so much, my husband for example thinks it’s stupid.

Last Friday I sat down, rewind the videotape and then, – no episode of Buffy. Nada. Obviously I had taped some film I had never heard of. I was furious. Not for a second did I think, I had programmed the VCR wrong,. And I was right. The channel showing my weekly tv show had decided to move it to another time, or to skip it altogether. This was especially annoying, since there was no warning the week before, and it was the final episode of season two where the big story arch of the whole season was about to be released. And it’s one of the most dramatic episodes of the whole show.

(Buffy has to kill the love of her life, a, um, vampire, who had been one of the good guys, then lost his soul (and she thinks it’s her fault): just in the moment, when she is about to thrust her sword through his heart, he gets his souls back, they tell each their eternal love, but she has to kill him anyway, in order to save the world. Best greek tragedy. (And no, I despise soaps.))

I was so upset that I spent the rest of the evening in front of the computer violating my very own ‘no computer in the evenings’-rule. First I tried to find out where the missing episode had gone. Then I tried to buy and download it from the iTunes music store, but since I’m living in Germany, no films to buy.

Those of you familiar with Buffy might ask “Why is she so upset? The show has been over for years.” And it’s not as if I had never seen that particular episode. I have seen it at least two times. Because the final season of “Buffy the vampire slayer” had been aired years ago. Maybe in 2002 or so. And afterwards I lent the whole series on DVD from a student of mine and watched it all again, but without annoying advertisement breaks and in English. So even I was flabbergasted, why did this make me so sad. Why do I love a show about a teenager fighting vampires so much? I don’t know yet, but I’ll let you know when I do.

But sad I was. And angry. I wanted my season finale. And then it hit me – I could go and buy it on DVD! I haven’t spent any money on comics, books or CDs in September, and since I had made a budget, I could spend it all on Buffy DVDs. So I went online and ordered season 2 and 3. Ha! I’ll watch the season finale and then the whole of season 3 and then season 2 and 3 again. For weeks. (I hope. This might turn into a Buffy-athon, ahem. I’ll ask my husband to remove me from the tv set with force at 10 p.m….) And I don’t have to watch annoying advertisement, or minutes of trailers for whatever film the channel is promoting this week until I don’t know any longer what I had been watching before the break.

And I’ll watch it in English! And the whole of the show. No more cutting off the final scene to announce whatever monstrous thing is up next. Ha! Take that tyranny. I’m becoming independent.

Though I really don’t know why I like this particular show so much. It is disturbing.

Technorati Tags: Buffy, TV, vampires