Brackish Reflections

It started with the photography business; as I put creative energy in to it, I started to neglect this.

And then the election ripped the ground from under my feet, and I was having a hard time finding how to exist here without ranting, wailing, crying. 

I feel out of practice. There are so many thoughts swirling, and I can't quite remember how I let them come to fill the screen. 

Over the past four years, the practice of documenting my family has brought be immeasurable joy. But truthfully, I started to become self-conscious saying the same things over and over again. Repeating myself and repeating what so many other mothers are saying across this wide web. But I want to return to that even if it means I will be repeating the same few ideas ad neuseam. Even if it means the occasional rant, now and again. Because there is value in giving my thoughts space to settle. In allowing myself moments of reflection. 

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At a Cross Roads

Last night I sat down to write a break-up letter to this space, to tell it I was leaving to go pursue something more practical. When I started my photography business in the spring, I started a separate blog on the Brackish website, and I have some vague notion that I'm supposed to be spending more energy on it because it helps with SEO and Google ranking. Keeping up two blogs feels a little silly, and the idea of drawing a line between the me of this blog and the me of that blog seems a bit arbitrary.

I thought the solution was to retire Our Buzzards, to start writing on my photography site more.

But that idea made me sad.

Coming here to write and share in this space has brought me happiness. `While the internet gets criticized for sucking people in and distracting them from the present, I feel that knowing that I wanted to come and write forced me to stay present. It gave me a reason to pay attention.

I know I could do all of that in a different space. I know that no matter what house we live in, my family will remain basically the same. But I love this house, this space. Even if it is just a janky old blogspot address.

I'm not saying good bye. Not yet at least. Thinking this all through and spending too long rereading old posts has actually given me a renewed interest in keeping up on things over here.

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Two Years In

Two years ago today I started this blog with a few words about a baby boy and a family ice skating trip. It has been one new year's resolution that I have actually kept. I started it when blogs were well past their heyday. The chance of creating something that would be a thing was pretty minimal, but I have never been an early adapter, so it was no surprise that I got in on the action at the tail end.

I also felt pretty narcissistic about the whole enterprise. What did I possibly have to contribute that someone else wasn't already contributing? Why would anyone care about my little bits of introspection and some pictures of the things we did over the weekend?

I almost never acknowledge the existence of this blog in the real world. I get embarrassed when I run into someone, and they mention reading it. It feels silly and trivial. I never quite know what to say. When I had a Facebook account, I only posted a link to this blog once, and I remember going into work the next day very anxious that someone would mention it. No one did.

However, silly and self-involved the whole thing might be, it's something I enjoy. I like trying to prepare my thoughts as I drive home from work in the afternoons. I like having an excuse to sit down and hammer out a few sentences in the evenings while the kids play near by. I like getting to go back and re-read words and ideas that weighed on my mind at some point in the not-that-distant past.

Blogging is different from keeping a journal. I know that the goal of my writing is to share it, even if that network is quite humble. But knowing that someone else will see the words makes me try just a little harder to craft them. I mull over some of the ideas, leave them be for awhile, come back when I think I have a little more clarity.

And blogging almost turns your whole life into a hobby. You get to look at your everyday moments through a different lens. While this might seem inauthentic or staged, it is also meditative and reflective. It has filled me with appreciation and gratitude. I know that especially when I first started this blog, I felt like I had to make sure that I actually did some things to write about. And making myself do things is a really good practice. In the months after Arlo was born, which happen to be the first months of this blog, I felt so completely and totally content with life.

When I look back through the archives, I cringe at certain turns of phrases, words that sound like they came out of someone else's mouth. I don't love all the pictures. I wonder why I bothered sharing some thoughts at all. But I also am glad that those words and pictures and thoughts are there for me to revisit, and I am even more grateful for the pleasure they brought me while I worked on them.

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Thoughts I Thought

Lately, I haven't had much desire to find time to come to this space. I don't exactly know what took the wind from my sails, but lately I have a hard time finding the words I'm looking for, and I have an even harder time finding the motivation to want to find those words. But then last week I read a pretty run-of-the-mill article on happy families, chocked full of advice I would never in a million years try to fit into our lives. But hidden among the prescriptions were two things that I could hang my hat on: the need to define your family's values and the  importance of telling your family's history.

Those two pieces of advice, plus a little gentle encouraging from Tom, made me want to work harder at finding the words that have been evading me as of late. This space has always been the place where I distill what it means to be a part of our family. It is the place where I tell our history, or at least my version of it.

It is also the place where I celebrate our joys, which has maybe been the greatest blessing this endeavor has brought me.

Among those things I want to celebrate and remember, Arlo out pushing the stroller while the big kids zip around him on their scooters. Our little one block, one way street gets loud and merry in the afternoons with kids racing back and forth. And Arlo runs among them, barefoot and slow and perfectly content.

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Voice

Like most people, I hate to hear my voice in recordings. And there's a reason we don't usually like it, or so Tom tells me. It has something to do with vibrations and how we hear ourselves, versus how other people hear us. Our voices sound different to us inside our own heads.

I think writing is the same way. I hear myself one way, and then I try to put it in words, and it sounds so different. The Rachel of this blog, does not sound like the Rachel in my head, who does not sound anything like real-life Rachel.

Real life Rachel is loud, and her voice sounds like gravel and whiskey, and she laughs even louder than she talks. Real life Rachel mispronounces words she knows the meanings of and she doesn't enunciate as well as she should.

Real life Rachel takes up a lot of space, in every way imaginable. She fills every silence. She uses a lot of hand gestures. Her favorite form of humor involves embarrassing herself in front of other people, the more the better.

Written voice Rachel, this written voice, is so different, at least in my own opinion. This Rachel seems so much softer, more introspective. This Rachel is quieter and sweeter, and in my opinion, not nearly as funny. Also, she cusses less.

I am realizing that most people don't like their writing, but I sort of do like my writing. And I know it has nothing to do with the fact that my writing is great.  But I think it might have to do with the fact that my writing voice is so different from my real voice, the one that laughs after she says things so that people will know she is joking.  I am almost completely disconnected from this voice. I guess it just means that this voice, the one that works hard on capturing  and savoring and thanking, isn't authentic.

In real life, I would laugh right now, a big horse laugh and you would know that I am not taking myself as seriously as it appears. In real life there are lol's and hehe's that I never type.  You might not realize how often I intend to poke fun at myself.   In real life, I would have offered you a drink and a grilled cheese by now. And I would have tried to offset my aggressively boisterous personality by asking you lots of questions about you.

Sometimes after parties and gatherings, real life Rachel is embarrassed by how completely over-the-top she can be, attention seeking and, quite frankly, obnoxious. If I was actually capturing that Rachel's voice, I think I would hate it. But I don't know how. So I've made up this character instead. And this character seems like a better mother anyway, so I'll let her keep writing.

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Telling Our Story

I've been thinking about the story I want to tell in this space*, thinking about why I come here and what my goal is.
I have a story I want to tell, and although it isn't unique or incredibly special, it is ours. It's the story of my growing children and my smart husband. It's the story of friendship and lots of family. It's the story lived on the water's edge and filled with small parties. It's the story of weeknight dinners and Sunday School. It's the story of looking for joy and cultivating gratitude.
It's the story of a little boy taking his first steps on wobbly legs.

It's the story of a bigger little boy who helps his mama make dinner.

It's the story of a little girl who spends hours filling pages with words and pictures and a whole lot of imagination.

This past year my quasi-mantra has been from third favorite president, Teddy Rooselvelt "Comparison is the thief of joy."I realized that I spent far too much time comparing myself and my children and my life to beautiful, inspiring images, and it felt like it was robbing me of joy. Comparison will get me every time.
What brings me joy is finding moments and clumsily capturing them with a lens or with a few words, and taking the moment to be grateful for the life we have: the friends, the house, the pictures on the wall, the table set for dinner, the little hands folded in prayer. This is our story and telling it brings me joy, comparisons be damned.

*playing off some of these thoughts

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