How Did I Get Here?

It was around the first of November of 2006. I was looking to replace the bumper sticker on our Subaru. After five years of New England weather it was getting tattered. We had originally purchased it at a shop called Eden Rising on Cottage Street in Bar Harbor, Maine. When we were up there in October we had looked in vain. So I decided to try searching on line. I Googled the phrase: “Love Is Our Soul Purpose” plus bumper sticker. I didn’t get much, but one was at an address called PoetMama at blogspot June 2006. I clicked the link and found myself in what I later learned was a Blog. Up until that moment I thought blogs were all just political rants from both sides of the aisle. But here was a young mom who wrote poetry and had made note of a bumper sticker she had seen and liked. I felt as if I had fallen down the rabbit hole! I read a little on her page, then clicked on some links to other blogs and kept finding all kinds of interesting people. I continued following this trail of breadcrumbs and found lots of women, and a few men, from all over the world, who, like me, were interested in art, poetry, writing, family, photography, food, books... These were blogs? Hmmm. I set up a new bookmark folder and started adding bookmarks in order to retrace my steps later. Over the next couple of weeks I read lots of blogs, learned lots of new things and became increasingly excited at the idea of creating my own blog.

In my poetry notebook I started jotting down ideas and questions. I kept finding answers and adding ideas. Then I needed to come up with a name for my future blog. I created a long list of possibilities. Most of them were lines from my poems. But one related to a proud moment from a few years ago when I had triumphed during a terrible summer thunderstorm and subsequent power outage. Thankfully Chuck Googled the particular phrase I had in mind. What he learned left us both shocked, laughing and me disappointed. The only way I can put this delicately is to say the phrase was centuries old slang for something sexual. It had also been revived in contemporary urban slang, with the same meaning. YIKES! Back to the notebook! The next phrase was from one my poems: “50 Yellow Daffodils”. This time I Googled it and was reminded that yellow daffodils are closely associated with fund raising to fight cancer. An absolutely worthwhile cause, but not at all what I planned to focus on in my blog. Back again to the notebook. Finally I settled on the phrase “Pink Granite”. Believe you me I Googled and Wiki’d the daylights out of it. This time nothing but geology and kitchen countertop entries! Hooray!

So on the day after Thanksgiving I registered with Google, then Blogger and I became the proud owner of my very own blog! I finally managed to post my first entry just before 3:00 a.m. Saturday morning! Just over a month and 36 posts later I am delighted with this journey. I wanted my blog to be an outlet for my writing, as well as a way to stay in touch with family and friends. It has done all that and so much more! By the way, I still haven’t found that replacement bumper sticker and we are still waiting to get our Subaru back from the auto body shop! All things in time. Thanks PoetMama and thanks to all of you reading this, my 37th post!