1/100 I’m not a blogger and this is my blog (part I)

I have surprised people many times by admitting that I do not have a blog. Over the years, as blogging has emerged, thrived, and developed, I have been asked: “Why don’t you have a blog!?” This is not a serious question, as I have learned by attempting to answer it. I do, as it happens, have a few lists of reasons why not to blog. 

The top of one of the lists is that I don’t have a personal brand. I have some lists about that too, but that’s for another day. What I do have is some self-knowledge. I know that I consistently come back to three things: I like to explore, I like to make, and I like to reflect.

1. Explore

I like to explore— to read widely, go to new places and bring new perspectives to favorite places, immerse myself in rabbit holes of research, and go on adventures medium and small. What of the larger adventures—wandering with no cellphone along a street thousands of miles from anyone I know thinking “I could get lost and disappear forever and no one would figure out what happened”? At this point in my life, with my best efforts, I can’t disappear for five minutes. My work email and my kids are always onto me. But I can develop my curiosity.

2. Make

I like to make—to bake, cook, doodle, arrange, build, art, and craft—sometimes in a straightforward way and others in a way particular to me and my life. I bake bread, for example, and cookies, and I build unrecognizable conceptual playgrounds out of my kids' toys. I doodle for three minutes while my students write.

3. Reflect

I like to reflect—through conversation, writing, and reading, as I look at a tree, a sunset, a painting. And as I consider the number of dishes produced by a simple meal and ask myself if it was worth it, given that no one wanted to actually eat the product of my efforts. In fact, on the back of my mind much of the time, I am asking whether it, whatever “it” is, is worth it. Somehow, even though the answer is often a resounding “probably not,” I am trapped into “it.” What does always feel worthwhile to me is to reflect, even when the result is disheartening. 

I realize this is all very not-suitable-for-branding, but as my grandmother often declared, giving the advice Polonius gives his son Laertes in Hamlet the weight of the scripture that many mistake it for, “To thine own self be true / And it must follow as the night the day / Thou canst not then be false to any man” (Act 1, scene 3).

So I’m not going to try to be brand-ready. Instead, I’m going to try out a range of ideas as I’m taking up the challenge of posting to this blog daily for 100 days. (Sort of. More on that later). This challenge came to me from my brother, Lucas McLaughlin, at http://lucasmclaughlin.com where he is in the midst of Artworking, a 100 day challenge of his own.

I asked for advice, as he’s several days ahead of me in the challenge, and with a far more developed personal brand. “Find your niche,” he said. 

I believe this advice to be excellent. The problem I’ve consistently run into is that I can’t find a niche.

Maybe I secretly don’t want one.

And maybe this blog can do some of the work of developing my space, a niche for myself that feels right.