When I resurrected this blog a few weeks ago, J was less than thrilled. “Why?” he asked. “Who reads it? Who will you be talking to?” You see, as insane as it may sound, we deleted our Facebook accounts a while back. We’ve seen far too many friends and acquaintances lose what appeared to be solid relationships in no small part because of social networking sites and “secret” email accounts. So we decided, for us, the best move was to kill the Facebook accounts. Naturally, when I told him about the blog, he wondered what was up.

I realized yesterday that I didn’t give him the best answer I could have.  All I really did was try and reassure him that I had no intentions of using this blog as a way to network or re-connect with old friends. I tried to explain the anonymity of blogging and how therapeutic writing is for me. But what I should have said was, “because I need to write.”

I’m a writer. Period. Sometimes it pays (part of) the bills and others it doesn’t pay at all. But not writing for me really isn’t an option. If I’m not putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard, the words are still rolling around in my head. Sometimes it’s prose, others poetry and still others lyrics. The point is, I can’t shut it off. It’s who I am.

J’s a musician. I joke with him and say he was born knowing how to play guitar which isn’t really true. But he was born a musician. He had to learn how to chord and the proper way to hold a set of drum sticks just as I had to learn how to hold a pencil and the proper way to string words together. He doesn’t make money (yet) playing music but he still plays. It’s not his living but it’s more a part of who he is than anything else he does, with the possible exception of wrapping me in those big, strong arms and holding me tight. He plays because he’s a musician.

I blog because I’m a writer. Pamie.com says to own it… not to be embarrassed or ashamed or to consider blogging to be a less-than-legitimate form of writing. These are my words. This is my podium… my baby-pink diary with the teeny tiny key… my stream of consciousness journal from sixth grade.

Be they profound or profoundly silly, the words I post here reveal more about me than one would learn working beside me for years. Like most women my age, I’ve put up walls. You know what I allow you to know about me. I’d prefer the person who has to review the copy I wrote yesterday not know how mushy I am over my rock star of a husband… or how much I want a rugrat running around the house with J’s charm and my sense of humor. But you guys? You get to know more than you probably want to know. And that’s okay because, while I hope someone is reading and at least moderately entertained by my words, I’m not writing for you. I’m not secretly hoping for a book deal or my fifteen minutes of fame. I’m just writing.

Because that’s what I do.