Making A Comeback

Welcome to the new and improved (and by improved, I mean a whole lot freer) beanieandherbirds blog!

It's almost exactly a year since my disastrous - but highly educational - escapade with a paid blog host. For just shy of a year, I owned a domain name and learned a crazy amount about blogging on a more professional level. I poured a lot of love into creating that blog, and even though it was a humble little site, I found satisfaction in knowing that I had built that thing from the ground up. I learned some coding, picked a color pallet and a theme, solved technical issues that I never dreamed I'd be able to figure out, watched youtube tutorial after youtube tutorial, had a mission statement, wrote several pretty solid blog posts, posted weekly and then....bluehost failed me.

It was a problem that no matter how hard I tried, I could not solve. I will give bluehost some kudos for their customer service reps who tried to help talk me through the issues I experienced, but ultimately (after days of frustrating back and forth with bluehost) I concluded that if I were paying for this service that I could otherwise get for free through another platform, it had better be at least sort of user friendly. So, we split up, bluehost and I. I archived my new posts over at my 'classylassy' blog and shut the thing down. Got some money back, pocketed my hard-earned blogging knowledge and cut my losses.

It was actually unbelievably painful.

And so, here I sit over a year later having not blogged at all in that time because the thought of doing so was an irritating and somewhat painful reminder of the enormous failure I'd been in the blogging world. It reminded me of all of the time I'd wasted on building that humble little blog and the pain that was caused by hitting 'delete' on all of those weeks of hard work. It was a sad day, guys, A really sad day.

Fast forward to the now. I'm currently reading Stephanie Nielson's memoir "Heaven Is Here". If you don't know who Stephanie Nielson is, I highly recommend checking her out over at nieniedialogues.com. She is fantastic and her story is breathtakingly inspirational. She started her blog in 2005 and quickly became fairly widely read. She is a cute and creative homemaker and her crafts, recipes, decor and DIY posts took the blogging world by storm. She was bubbly and happy and lived a pretty ideal life with her true love and her four babies in Mesa, Arizona. In 2008, she and her husband were in a devastating airplane crash. They both survived, but over 80% of Stephanie's body had been severely burned. Her entire life was completely changed and her memoir very beautifully describes the struggles she faced and the miracles she witnessed during her lengthy recovery. I highly recommend the book; it's a fantastic read about faith and family and finding hope amidst absolutely devastating circumstances. But the point today is that it has inspired me to come back to the blogging world.

In her book, Stephanie describes starting her blog and falling in love with it. As she talked about that part of her life, it struck a familiar chord with me. I love blogging. I find it extremely therapeutic. I have always loved writing; it's a creative outlet for me and as a mom, finding a creative outlet is more important than ever. Mostly because my every day tasks of 'creating' (meals, cleanliness, folded laundry, etc.) are almost instantly undone by the forces of entropy. Oh, also my three-year-old. And his big brother. And the little one who is currently in training as my third Unmaker.  

I miss documenting my every-day adventures and sharing it with whomever among my friends and family might care to read about it. I've missed the feedback I get that makes me feel not so alone in the fairly lonely world of momming. I've missed the outreach it provides. I've missed that feeling that comes with pushing the 'publish' button and knowing that I just put something out into the world that will still be there tomorrow.

So, I am back! I'm blogging again. And probably no one will care a whole lot, but dang it, *I* do! I've started fresh with a new domain name and blog title and put about thirty minutes into finding a pre-made template that I like. Hooray for simplicity this time around!

Blogging likely won't ever lead me to any sort of career or 'big break' moment, but I'm okay with that at this point. I'm blogging for me now. I'm blogging because I love it.

So buckle up and stay tuned for life updates and pictures!

I know. Exciting stuff, right?