Blogging

It dawned on my yesterday that I have been blogging for almost 8 years now. I started blogging when I was pregnant with Dannika to document my pregnancy, and keep my family and friends in Texas updated on our newlywed life in Southern California. It turned out to be a great little piece of my cyberspace where I could post pictures of my family, brag about "stuff",  and even vent. It's become a place where I've often shared my frustrations and struggles in military life, marriage, and parenting to complete strangers (and friends on family). I'm sometimes more open on my blog than I am to those who are closest to me. Writing my feelings and thoughts down is just easier than having to say it out loud to someone. In fact, I've used it to air my frustrations about Nick TO Nick. I vent on here, and I let him read it. It has saved our marriage hundreds of petty arguments because instead of me getting emotionally charged and saying things I don't mean, I can just write it, rewrite it, edit it, and really take a hard look at it before hitting "publish".

My blog has never meant make any money, nor is there anything I can really make money on. Who wants to pay me to write about my own kids and my own life? lol. I laugh as I write that, because I've always thought my testimony and life story would make a great book/Lifetime movie. I've done a couple little sponsored posts here and there for free, meaningless, and often useless "stuff". I've been paid a few bucks here and there to review something. Most of these posts were when I was in transition from Marine Corps life to Marine Wife life (hey, check it out...I'm a poet and didn't know it!). I was bored, home, and trying to find something to fill all this "extra" time I had all of a sudden. Yes, Marine wife and SAHM life is hard, but being a full-time, active duty Marine was like a billion times harder...I can say that, cause I've done both, right? 

Since moving to Texas and starting college, I've had less free time, and blogging has been on the back burner. I don't know how many times a day, I say to myself, "oh man, I can't wait to blog about this", but never get around to it. I've used Instagram and Facebook as a "not so great" alternative to blogging. But I truly miss consistently sitting down every day to write my thoughts. I don't make New Years Resolutions, because honestly, I'll forget what they are by January 10th (random date), but I hope this year, I'll make more of an effort to find time to blog.

I have also toyed around with the idea of transferring my blog to Wordpress, but seeing as how I am not using this to make money or using it to promote anything, I think I'll stick to blogger. I also am clueless on how to do it, which means I'd have to hire someone, and based on quotes I've looked at, spending 350 dollars to do that is not my priority. People have complained about this platform, but it's been pretty darn good to me for the last 8 years. I am planning on redesigning my blog theme, and by "I", I am going to hire someone to do it. I think I'll keep the name. I still feel like my life as an active duty Marine was still just yesterday, and most days, I still feel like a fish out of water trying to adjust to "Marine wife life". As for "domestic bliss", I am definitely a lot more "domestic"than I was as an active duty Marine. I actually do things like cook a homecooked dinner from scratch (almost) every night, and I no longer hire a cleaning lady to clean my house. GASP...I actually clean my own house (with a tremendous amount of help from Nick, and minimal help from the two little humans I created). I do things like take my kids to the park on a Wednesday at 1:00PM (notice, I did not say 1300). I like my new slightly "domestic" life, and I don't miss my old one. I take that back. I miss the people in my old one. I miss Marines. I miss going into work and hanging out and talking to Marines. I miss being surrounded by so much culture and diversity, and yet sharing the same title and uniform as a group of people. America could learn a thing or two from the Marines....

Anyway, it's a cold day today. I say "cold" in Texas terms because after living in New England for two years, my definition of "cold" is drastically different than those around me here. This cold made me want to blog, and reading back, I did a lot of rambling. Here's to more blogs in 2017!

And because no blog seems quite complete without a photo....

Here's an adorable one of my son!