Do one thing every day that scares you

I am a fairly recent immigrant to the Blogosphere.

About a year ago, I began reading Tere’s blog, because I wanted to connect with her, and support her journey. I suspect I borrowed the title for today’s post from one of her early ones.

Next I began reading Annabel’s blog, because she updates every day, and lives in the USA, so I could read a fresh post while breastfeeding in the wee small hours each morning.

This inspired me to seek out more blogs among my friends: I bookmarked Sarah’s, then Richard’s. I looked up Stu’s, but he’s stopped blogging. I read occasional posts from Tash. This weekend I found Catrien’s got one. Peter says he might next start a blog about having started too many blogs. I hope Christine gets hers going, I’m always inspired by what she has to say.

However, this is not a case of “everyone else is doing it, so why can’t I?”. I’ve picked up a few ideas about my likes & dislikes, but I don’t feel ready to start blogging myself. I don’t know enough! Computers are for playing Scrabble, and reflective writing is for teacher trainees! And I’m not ready to be a published writer! I still start sentences with “and” sometimes!

Why, then, am I starting a blog? Because it’s part of my coursework for a very exciting paper I’m taking on children’s literature. So there we go: my goal is to get a good grade; my topic will be children’s literature; my perspective is that of a thirty-something wife, new mother, tertiary-qualified and tertiary-studying, somewhat geeky, Christian, Scrabble addicted, punctuation-preoccupied librarian; and my expected audience is my classmates, lecturers, and maybe a few friends if I get confident enough to share my address with them.

I can’t pretend I’m not a little bit excited by this opportunity. Who wouldn’t be? Maybe I already have a list of possible topics for my first four posts, keeping me awake at night (before I even get near the books). I can’t say I’m not tempted to start other blogs already (this one covers books, but what about my other obsessions: apostrophes, Scrabble, cooking, my incredible baby? Doesn’t the world need some more of those blogs?) but I think I’ve learned enough from others’ experiences to know how easy it is to bite off more than you can chew in this strange new world.