Know Thyself, Know Thy Blog

This week Emily posted a 2-part series on refining your blog. And if you haven't checked it out, you need to.

In part one she asked readers why they blogged. My own comment to that question was a blog post in itself. I feel like I need to pay rent on the memory space my comments take up over there. {I always get a bit chatty over at Chatting at the Sky.} Why do I blog? It's a question I've asked myself many times and have yet to articulate well or definitively.

In part two she provided questions to ask oneself, questions that help refine one's bloggy purpose.

I struggled to answer every. single. question. They were not difficult questions, but they were nearly impossible for me, which posed yet another question. Why? Why are questions that get to the heart of who I am and what makes me tick, questions pertaining to why I do the things I do so hard for me to answer? Why have they always been hard for me to answer?

I have my own ideas about that one and while I am a pretty open person on my blog and in the comments I leave on others' blogs, I certainly don't share everything. And the complicated answer to that one is still being worked out privately. As it should be.

But in a nutshell, I think I can't answer what should be simple questions because that would require really knowing myself well. And I'm not sure that I do yet. I know who I have wanted to be at various stages of my life. I know who I have been in the past. I know who others would like me to be. I know who I'm not.

But I'm still neck-deep in the trenches of figuring out who I am.

Look at my blog's tag-line for crying out loud. "A little scoop for every slice of life." Hi, Avoidance called and thinks your blog is perfect. That tag-line is code for, "I don't want to be pinned down, pigeon-holed, or defined. I want to be a little bit of everything to everybody. I am a people-pleaser extraordinaire." To echo Miss Whitney, "I'm every woman."

But I'm not. I want to be. And that simply cannot be.

My Maker did not make me to be. I just wish he would have sent a Certificate of Authenticity or Instruction Manual upon my arrival. Figuring it out on my own is painful and exhausting.

Emily's questions made me swallow hard. Maybe it's because deep down I do know the answers {sort of} to some of those questions and answering truthfully forces me to accept realities I wish were otherwise.

Defining my blog? It's a good thing to do. It's something I resolve to do.

But I've got to define myself first. And that may take some time.