The purpose of life

Every now and then, I take a step back and ask, "Who am I? Why am I here? What is the purpose of life?"

Or rather, I ask those questions of my blog.

What is the purpose of this blog?

The purpose of last year's blog was easy. We were living far away from family across an ocean. The blog neatly chronicled strange cultural experiences, travel, accents, and toilets into an online journal that could be shared immediately with family, friends, and weird blog stalkers like You and Bob the Enemy. I was reading over last year's blog recently and Remembering and also appreciating every well crafted post (both of them).

But what is the purpose of this new blog?

I guess I could say again it's for family and friends, and to chronicle all the interesting things we do. Like go to the dentist, chop down grape vines, and commit not to be like Bryan. Um. Wow. Pretty exciting.

I've been pondering this question on the purpose of my blog for a few days now. Thora and Hans-Juergen seem to have gone through recent blog introspection as well, although I don't know that my purpose matches theirs.

Then a couple of days ago while walking to work, it came to me. The real reason for this blog.

Bear with me a moment while I share a couple of seemingly unrelated stories.

At the end of my high school years and the beginning of college years, I took up piano. I had taken lessons before, but at this time I finally started playing regularly. I could sit and practice for a couple of hours each day. I learned all sorts of music I had never learned before, and picked up enough confidence that to this day I will happily play in church meetings with no advance notice. What inspired me to suddenly start playing? Stress. I found that twisting my fingers into knots or pounding out chords really helped me decompress. Just writing about that makes me want to go play the piano again. Alas, I don't yet own a piano.

I haven't owned a piano for over ten years. In grad school, I took up painting. Nearly all the paintings that hung on our walls in our high ceilinged Texas home were created by me. Nearly all the paintings that are stored under our stairs to wait out the remodel here were created by me. What inspired me to continue painting? Stress. I found that slapping paint on a canvas and smelling paint fumes helped me decompress. Just writing about it doesn't actually make me want to go paint again, because alas, I'm suffering again from a mild migraine, and I don't think I could handle the paint fumes.

But now jump ahead a couple of years. I find myself living in England, away from piano and paints, in a strange land where words like "pants" don't mean what you think they mean (so you might want to double check what you're saying). My husband is working nights. So I take up blogging. And enjoy it. And then a year later, back in the US where "pants" means just what you think it means, but still makes me snicker, I am still blogging. Why? What for?

Decompression.

Of course, I don't think I'm getting the same benefits as I would from banging on the piano. My laptop keyboard can't take banging quite like a piano. On the other hand, my son is currently asleep, and that probably wouldn't be the case if I were hammering out concertos at this time of night.

So there you have it. The purpose of this blog. Maybe it's not what we expected. But somehow, it's still nice to know.

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Footnote: This post leaves us with several unanswered questions.

1. Newcomers to this blog are asking, "What is this old blog you are referring to? Why don't you include a link?"

I would link to the old blog, only I like this blog to have the semblance of anonymity. My last blog had my name slathered all over it. Therefore, I can't put in a link to the old without giving away my Secret Identity.

However, if you are really really curious, do a Google search for "English commode". Yup. That's my blog entry at the very very top. (And still my all-time-favorite post ever.)

2. Old readers (both of them) are asking, "Newcomers? Do you really have blog newcomers?"

Someday someone may do a Google search that leads them to this post. If they are still reading this far, then they will be a newcomer.

3. "What happens after blog death?"

Well, Google analytics reports that after the death of my last blog, the regular readers have stopped visiting. Yet the blog still receives at least as many hits as it did during life, due to search engine traffic. The most popular keywords, after my name, are "cheeky in a sentence", "cottage names", "English commode", and "how to pronounce Tintagel." Thus a blog never truly dies, but lives eternally through Google. I've decided I'd better remove the link from that blog to this one, in my quest to pretend to be anonymous. Ha ha.

4. "Did you notice this is the 12th post in October?"

Yes. Yes in fact, I did. I guess that means I have broken away from 11 posts per month. At least for now.

4. "You can't really think of any more questions, can you?"

No, actually I can't. So I will finally stop.