How on earth do you start a blog?

How on earth do you start a blog? I've been defiantly procrastinating for weeks and getting nowhere. I think I’m finding it difficult to be honest about why I really want this blog project, and R has assured me if I’m not going to be honest, there’s little point in doing it at all. (And I have to trust him, as Web Geek to my ignorance).

Soooooo, taking the proverbial bull by the horns, I’m doing it because I’m a bit bored. (If this were a self-help group, people would clap now…) I’m just a bit bored. Mentally, not time-wise. Time-wise, I’m utterly flat-out busy, most of the time, but my brain, like much of me these days, is rather under-exercised, and dulled by repetitive housewifely chores and the general mayhem of multitasking motherhood.

I really need to give it something to think about. I need to force it to ponder things other than Small Children And Housework becaaauuussse… if I don’t , my brain and I are going to spiral into the very pits of housewifely vacuity and in a few months time I’ll be smiling blandly and not knowing where Venezuela is.* We may speak of Nappy Brain in mock-horror tones, and as a concept it might very well sound amusing, but I’ve been doing this for four years and, for me, it is a real and present menace lurking just around the corner.

Hence all this. R has been very good in his assaults on my procrastination. Probably the biggest reason for my nerves is simply that I am pretty sure I have little of interest to say. But then, as he pointed out, with unusually kind reassurance, this could be a way of forcing myself to rectify that, in my own mind at least. I suppose, in any case, lots of people have Nothing To Say, but still manage to say it with surprising loquacity. My second worry was that it could all be just a bit self-indulgent, a mere extension of vanity publishing, which again he has deftly rebutted with refreshingly male “So bloody what?”. I do suppose, then, if you’re not actually forcing anyone to read your blog, it doesn’t really matter. But it’s taken a while to get here.

So why else then? Well, I really do worry that motherhood (much as I have honestly come to love it) is making me a bit thick. And while I can sulkily reconcile myself with the fact that I going to get older, fatter, wrinklier, whatever, I do NOT want to get thicker, not ever.

Therefore, for me, trying to maintain a blog is all about reclaiming the tiniest bit of sanity as I used to know it.; about some kind of regular cerebral stimulation in the very few minutes of quiet anyone can hope for when living with perpetual-motion pre-schoolers. And maybe this will propel me towards some of all the fascinating stuff out there which I always seem to put after the daily mundanity and then never look at.

So. Six Seconds Of Sanity. Lets see, shall we?

* Note to R: before you get gleeful, I DO know where Venezuela is, thank you, I do have an opinion on Chavez and I could even give a good stab at its GDP, at the moment - I’m just talking about what MIGHT happen, soon. Just as an example. I know what you were thinking…