My blogging world used to be very active in my teaching days. That blog, now made private, led me to a collection of amazing friends. Some of these friends I met in person at this teaching conference or that teacher’s workshop, some I connected with through the magic of virtual conversations and shared social media. These friendships kept me going in my teaching life, and truly enriched all areas of my life.

Once I retired, and took up shepherding and all those pursuits I never seemed to have the time for before (gardening, making preserves, reading for pleasure, napping any old time I felt like it), blogging took a backseat. I created a new blog, and I did post from time to time, but my new identity seem to create a vacuum in my writing life, and made me question what the point of my blogging was in the first place. Sometimes I wrote about the farm and my sheep, sometimes I opened my writing space to include what was deeply personal, sometimes I wrote about nothing more than a farm moment. It felt good to write, but I wondered about the why of writing – especially on a platform like this, which is so very public. More than once, when I opened up my laptop and clicked onto my WordPress site, I heard Emily Dickinson’s words rattling around in my brain: “This is my letter to the world/
That never wrote to me,–“.

Clearly, I have issues with overthinking everything, including the “need” for a blog.

In any case, I happened upon my friend Elsie’s blog today, and read her latest post, which led to my friend Ruth’s blog and reading her post, which was an invitation:

All of the above made me realize something that related to the blogging/writing quandary I seem to have been floundering in: I miss the friends my blogging life led me to, and I want to write to be part of that community again. And for that, I am grateful. Thank you, Elsie and Ruth…it’s good to be part of our blogiverse again.