It is a mixture of doubt, confused purposes, poor organization and conflicting priorities that has led to its neglect. Unlike an overgrown garden, however, this feels more like a boarded-up beach house, which calls out daily for summer and guests, guests, guests. This blog wants to be lived in.
Re-reading my favourite blogs recently, I found myself wondering why I am so often drawn to them, whilst others make their way into my blogroll, but are not often more than glanced upon.
Of course, there is that connection and resonance with my values, likes, style, concerns. But there is also these : authenticity and lifelikeness. I find myself reading and re-reading, anticipating blog entries when what I read makes me feel This is real! Things are told as they are. I like especially to read about days as they are, moments captured and somehow conveyed to me the reader intact such that they arrive almost untarnished (but can they ever be?).
And, I've come to realize, that although blogs with recipes (not food blogs per se!) occupy a large part of my blogroll, I favour those which share recipes which were part of a real meal, intended to feed real people, not so much cooked so that they could primarily feed blogrolls.
I love reading blogs which are full of the miscellany of life. If I wanted Perfect Pictures of Airbrushed Cakes, I'd read a cookbook (I love doing that, by the way). If I was on a quest for the Best Croissant Recipe, I may trust one that's on a blog, but I would be reading the blog not as a blog-genre blog, but as an informational test-genre blog, which is a strange thing that I am convinced actually exists nowadays.
But if it is a blog I am reading, I'd love it to contain bits of this, and bits of that, which remind me of all the bits of this and that in my own life that would usually belong to the realm of triviality, and thus the Realm of the Unnoticed and Unimportant, and even the Unseen.
Why is triviality so attractive, I often wonder? Perhaps it is that life cannot be lived without trivialities. Perhaps it is a fight against labeling some things as important and everything else as not. What's worth words, and what's not?
I don't really know, honestly. And perhaps, that not-knowing is precisely what's kept this little beach house so tightly boarded up, all these months.
It's time to unscrew those boards. Boldly. Welcome in, reader.
