I'm figgering on biggering...

... or at least undergoing a semi-radical overhaul. On the ol' blog, that is. Which I think reflects some shifting priorities in our lives.

This post title is a homage to Dr. Suess, who would have been 108 years old yesterday. The Once-ler in "The Lorax" went on biggering his Thneed production- with horrible consequences... those poor Bar-ba-loots with crummies in their tummies :(

If you haven't read The Lorax, please do... before you see the movie that was just released. The Lorax has been part of our family life for years now- thanks to a thoughtful Christmas gift from close friends when the girls were young. Our son has grown up with it. My husband can recite it by heart (as he can most of the other Dr. Suess books we own). I have mixed feelings about going to see the movie. I'm sure we will go, but I don't want it to colour the way I think about The Lorax and the Bar-ba-loots, or even the Swomee-Swans.

The take-home message of The Lorax has been resonating pretty loudly for me lately. We live such a typical suburban lifestyle: 3 kids, 2 jobs, constant moving to and from activities- I can't imagine having less than 2 vehicles! I'm sensitive to our impact on the environment and our carbon footprint... we try to lessen it in the ways we can, but we could always do more, there's no doubt. The key is to set our priorities, and make time for them, I think. That's where I'm heading... or at least trying to.

Because UNLESS someone like me cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better.

Its not.

Taking personal responsibility + making a plan for action = "biggering" in the right direction.

No Posts in 2011

So, the ol' blog went a whole year without any posts... and, to be honest, I haven't been visiting blogs at all, probably for that same amount of time!

Why has this blog, and so many that I used to follow regularly, gone stale? Hmm...

1) No time... blogging requires time to reflect, and time to write... most of the blogs I have followed are written by moms (a few are dads) with young children and hectic lives... Personally, my worklife has become more demanding as I've ramped up by career and supervise quite a few (maybe too many) graduate students. I think time constraints have played a big role in the collective blog neglect of many of us.

2) Facebook... is Facebook replacing the blog as a means of expressing what's going on in our lives? I've only been a FB user for about 6 months or so, and I do find it much easier to read friends' "updates" or "walls" than to spend time going to blog links. And forget having blog posts sent directly to e-mail. My e-mail volume is already more than I can usually handle. Do people really want to read blogs any more? I'm not sure.

3) Shifting priorities... in my blogging world, most of my fellow bloggers have some connection to international adoption. Most of us started blogging as a means to communicate with other families in the same boat as we were: waiting for the process of international adoption to be completed, so we could bring our kids home. Thankfully for most (but still not all families, if you can believe it), our kids are at home and they have now become individuals to us, not mere concepts, who have a right to privacy. Its challenging to walk that line between respecting your children's privacy and being a proud parent. I've never felt that I've navigated those waters well, and I've probably erred often on the side of caution... meaning a boring blog for readers! But, that's OK, I came to terms long ago that this blog is for me, not for anyone else, when all is said and done!

4) Shifting interests... dare I say it? Is adoption as interesting a topic to me any longer, now that our family life with our son consists of everything that all families, whether formed through adoption or birth, experience: making lunches, piano lessons, weekend basketball tournaments, walking dogs, picking up groceries, cleaning floors (ok, I really don't do much of that!), etc., etc.... I can say that "yes", I am still very much interested in how families form through adoption and in advocating for adoption services. But since my own experiences with the process are not recent, I don't find myself as caught up in the stories as I once was. That's just life, I guess.

SO...what to do? Maybe nothing. I don't think Blogger resents the space that a mostly-defunct blog takes up. OR, maybe a re-invention, for reals this time... Not sure, we'll have to see...