Faith Restored

This isn’t a very generous thing to admit here, but I’ve recently been disheartened a bit by the state of bloglandia. I feel like, on lifestyle blog after lifestyle blog, I’ve been reading the same anguished quest for purpose and direction, hearing the same desperate cry for something momentous to happen, seeing the same aspirational desires typed out in the hope that, one day, our lives will be more. My own blog isn't exempt from this, of course, and we all want forward momentum; that’s how it should be.  After all, if we don’t grow throughout our lives, we stagnate. And I do understand that being surrounded by wave after wave of other people’s milestones – whether they’re downplayed or overhyped – on social media makes it easy to feel like we’re falling behind. (If you haven’t read this close-to-home article on The Onion, do it now!)

But blogging, like life, is about so much more than milestones. It’s about helping each other find the joy in small moments. It’s about acknowledging our failures as well as celebrating our successes in the comfort and security of our supportive community. And it’s about keeping things in perspective as our eyes are opened to the myriad of options the world provides.

I won’t be consistently joining Jenni’s #BlogEveryDayInMay project (in large part because I'm happy with the editorial calendar of six posts a week I had already drawn up and because I’ve written about many of the topics here before) but I’m beyond encouraged by the response it’s gotten. It sounds like I'm not the only blogger who was despairing and it’s just the push we needed to rediscover the beauty in writing about what might otherwise be considered mundane. I've read a handful of the 760 posts from yesterday, and my faith has absolutely been restored. Thank you, blog friends, for being true.