If you follow my blog, you will notice that I have been blogging every day since the first of November.

It is of course NaBloPoMo, a time when, for a whole month, the goal is to post every day.

I started this blog, my first blog, in May of 2005. I can’t believe that it has been so long!

I did it because I was tired of being places that I was not able to have a voice without it becoming a debate. I was, at that time, Moderator of the AP board on BabyCenter. It seems like a lifetime ago, and because BabyCenter was and is still a very mainstream board, the AP board was much of the same. I needed a place to be able to rant and rage and say what I felt without having to put a moderator hat on and “be nice”…I also needed to be able to finally talk about positive things (like breastfeeding milestones etc) without people taking it as an attack on their choices. (well, at times, since that has happened here too)

I have tried many times in my life to keep a journal and I have always failed. I would start, keep it up for a while and then I just stopped so I never thought when I started this blog that I would still be blogging more than 4 years later. Blogging turned out to be exactly what I needed at the time and soon after I started I stepped down from my position as moderator and never went back.

My Blog has transformed since that time, and I have grown also… going from “Paxye’s Rant” on Blogger, to “a hippie with a minivan” on WordPress here on my own domain name. The change came after I decided that I wanted this blog to be more than about rants, I wanted it to be about all the things that I am passionate about. I don’t blog for money, or to have the most readers, I blog because I want to share about my family, photography, cooking, sewing, unschooling and just being a parent.

But, as my journal experiences showed me, when I slow down it becomes harder to start up again.  Last year, I was slowing down considerably and in some ways I was ready to let the blog fizzle when I heard about NaBloPoMo, and thought that it might just help me get in the beat again and it did. Though at times I find it hard to find things to post, I am glad that I have kept it up, if only it is for me to be able to look back and remember what I have been though, what my thoughts have been and see how I evolved in that time.

So, I am again using NaBloPoMo this year to give me another boost, to get back in the habit so that I don’t let the blog fizzle any time soon. 15 days in, half way through, and it hasn’t been that bad to think about what to write… I have a good feeling that I will make it for the second year which will give me another boost for the time ahead..