"I read, not because I have no life, but because I wish to live many!"
Author Unknown
I am bored to tears with all the blogs I've tried reading lately. Back when Hubby first set me up with a blog of my own, I didn't even know what a blog was! So, I went out and read as many as I could find, trying to figure out what made a blog interesting.
You'd think one would be drawn to blogs, as you are to people, with which you have much in common. However, at least in my case, the opposite seemed to be true. As I think back over all the many, many blogs I have visited over the years, well, I can count on one hand the ones which I became obsessed with -- the ones that grabbed my interest and pulled me into their story, making me so curious that I just had to go back to the very beginning, to see how that story had unfolded.
For that is exactly what they were -- stories! And, just like the books I have enjoyed most over the years, they allowed me to step into someone else's shoes, to experience a life that is nothing like my own at first glance, but in which I always seem to find some commonalities -- things I can relate to.
The first one to grab me was a blog called Orangette, written by food writer/blogger Molly Wizenberg. What grabbed me were her food recipes and her amazing photographs, the stories of her life in Seattle with her wonderful tribe of foodie friends, and the fact that this Seattle girl was about to marry a guy in New Jersey, whom she met through her blog! So, of course, I had to go back and see how that all came down.
Next I discovered a blog called Eyes of Wonder, written by Jewels -- a mother of ten who was living the simple life in New England à la Tasha Tudor . Sadly, she passed away not long ago, and her blog was made private, but you can get a glimpse of what drew me in by checking out these photos of hers on Pinterest.
From there I went on to discover several other blogs about people who chose a life outside of what we "average" people would consider normal in the U.S.A. And, I expect they all had some form of influence on how I ended up living my life. There was one called Down To Earth about an Australian woman who left a well paying but stressful job and learned how to live a simple life on a lot less money, and enjoy it much, much more. Another was called SouleMama, written by a mother of five who moved them from Portland, Maine to a nearby farm, home-schooled them all, wrote a couple of books on The Creative Family, and started Taproot Magazine. Last but not least is a blog called NieNie Dialogues. At the time I discovered it Stephanie had just got out of months in the hospital recovering from a horrific small plane crash involving her, her husband, and another friend who died. She had four small children who no longer recognized their mama (the youngest barely remembered her) and she had been moved from their home in Arizona back to Utah, so their large, close knit Mormon family could help them out during their recovery. They since have had a fifth child, the oldest ones are now teenagers, and her recovery has been nothing short of phenomenal.
Alas, most of these bloggers are no longer writing, though the blogs are still open to the public. But I am bored, and in desperate need of new inspiration! Won't you please, please suggest some other story-blogs that I could wander around and lose myself in?
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