100 Reasons to Love the Blog

Don’t worry, the list isn’t that long 🙂 but if you really do want 100 reasons to love the blog, how about clicking back through the 100 posts I’ve written! That’s right! What a fun, exciting accomplishment and coming at such a good time.

Kate at A Playful Day has taken on the challenge of #aninspired2015 and this month she’s helping us to “Fall Back in Love with Your Blog.” You can read more about the idea linked here. As the first week’s prompt, we are supposed to take a look at community and interactions. She doesn’t specify which community and who to interact with, so we will see where this goes.

I’ve talked previously about all the changes that have happened in my life over the last 18 months. I left a job, got married, moved to Louisville, got new jobs, left new jobs, moved to St. Louis, had a new baby niece…I’m sure there are other things, but that’s the bare bones of it. When things started changing for me, I was really struggling. People, titles, places were all different. In some instances the feeling of a fresh, new start was overwhelmingly welcome and a the same time, incredibly terrifying.

About 9 months into our marriage and a new city and new jobs, I was starting to really, REALLY wish for the familiar. I was struggling to be my best self and my best friend and husband noticed. I felt so guilty for falling into this funk and pulling him down too. In a moment of genius, he suggested I start a blog.

I had tried blogging before. Once about cooking, once about my life, once about lists I made. I didn’t think this time would be different. He said I should blog about something I was really interested in. I thought, “I tried that before and it got me no where.” He pointed out that what I was interested in was what I was spending most, if not all, of my free time doing: knitting.

So true. Since we moved, I found such comfort in knitting and creating with my hands. It was something I felt I could still do and be good at even if I didn’t have a teaching job or even if I wasn’t in the best shape. There was rarely a day I did not knit or think about knitting or browse Ravelry. I had been seeking out groups to knit with in the city and frequenting my LYS just to sit on the couch with the ladies who worked there so I wouldn’t be home knitting alone.

I jumped in. I started this blog and found kindred spirits. People who loved to knit. People who didn’t go a day without at least some sort of fiber passing through their hands or their minds. I have felt encouraged and accepted and maybe even loved. I know I keep this space pretty positive and feeling such a positive response to my words and projects and even mistakes makes me so grateful I started this journey.

Ok, it’s getting long and I haven’t even gotten to the part where I read tons of blogs and feel so inspired and such a feeling of belonging to this fiber world that I can’t even explain it!

Maybe I’ll save that for next Monday’s prompt.

If you’ve got a moment or a thousand, pop over to A Playful Day’s post today, The Blog Is NOT Dead and explore the link up she’s got going on. I know I will.

What about you? How do you feel about the community and interactions you have here in the online fiber world?

❤

Jenna