Balance—I’ve written a lot about trying to maintain a sane and happy balance in a life full of competing demands. For me, this always comes down to not being greedy. When I want too much I inevitably end up feeling driven and guilty and disappointed. Right now I am trying to have too much. I have become a slave to my to-do lists, which saps both my creativity and my enjoyment.

Like everybody else, I struggle with this balance all the time. But mine just got a whole lot more complicated. After spending much of the fall agonizing about it, our family has decided to move to Montreal, Canada next spring. We are incredibly excited about this opportunity, but the reality of an international move is starting to set in. (Sell house, find house, find job, arrange immigration, learn French…) It’s going to be a busy winter. I want to give this move the time and mental energy that it deserves, and to do that I have to pull back from other projects. I can’t think of any other way.

Focus—As I have built this blog my understanding and appreciation of blogs as a medium has grown. I have found that the blogs I follow most eagerly are both entertaining and informative and—here’s the key—related to very specific topics. I have known all along that this blog would benefit from a more defined theme, but I needed to write my way around a variety of topics in order to discern what that central purpose really was. I have some pretty good ideas about it now, but I suspect that the upcoming shift in latitude and career will change my perspective a bit.

I hope that before many months go by I will be able to awaken this blog from its long winter’s nap—reenergized, refocused, and with a renewed sense of purpose. (And perhaps the beginnings of a Quebecois accent!)

In the meantime, warm wishes to all for the holiday season and the New Year.

I recognize that this is Hollywood, but what a tale–ordinary girl has a good idea, starts a blog, writes for a while, and is suddenly inundated with calls from big reporters and offers of book deals. Her life is later made into a blockbuster movie with famous actors.

The key, of course, is the idea. (And also the cooking, I suppose.) Julie Powell’s year-long project of tackling all 524 recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking in her tiny apartment kitchen was surely a gimmick and a stunt, as it has disparagingly been called. But it was a good one.

My favorite description is one by food writer Michael Pollan writing for the New York Times. He describes Powell landing on her winning idea while “casting about for a blog conceit.” Though conceit has some less-than-savory connotations, I don’t actually think he’s being critical. According to Merriam-Webster Online, a conceit can be “a fanciful idea” or an “elaborate or strained metaphor,” but it can also mean “an organizing theme or concept.” All three definitions are applicable here.

So as other people have been dusting off their Julia Child cookbooks and no doubt boosting butter sales nationwide, I have been wondering: Does a blog need a conceit? Does mine have one?

I know some of the things that make a blog compelling: snappy writing, timely topics, an endearing author. (I will leave it up to you, dear readers, to decide whether this blog meets those criteria.) But I wonder whether that is enough. If I put some thoughts up here a couple of times a week about whatever is rattling around in my brain, will that draw people in and keep them reading? (Forget about a book deal.) If not, what would?

I think a blog conceit might be kind of fun, but I am still in the “casting about” stage. If I happen to hook a good one, you’ll be the first to know.

So I want to let you know about a very cool tool that may be new to you. See that little orange button in the top right corner of the screen? Right next to “Get the Tinkering RSS Feed”? If you click on it you will have all kinds of options for seeing new content on this blog without having to remember to visit this site.

It will come to you via a news reader–a tool that aggregates web info that you want to track and organizes it for you. Google has one. There are lots of other options too. Watch this short and handy video about RSS to learn how readers work.

Subscribing to this  blog with a reader is good for you, because it’s one less thing to remember, and you won’t risk missing the best post ever. And it’s good for me, because you’re much more likely to be a regular reader if all my scintillating new posts automatically show up in front of you.

Thanks for following, and happy reading!

Things This Blog Is Not

1. A chronicle of my family life. Though parenting, marriage, in-laws and other fascinating topics will undoubtedly come up in the course of the conversation, this is not where you will find out about my toddler’s new tooth or what we did last weekend.
2. A blog about politics. I’m as interested in current events as the next gal. I’m also interested in democracy, and America, and how our government works.  (In fact, I’m currently kind of obsessed with The West Wing.) And I suppose I may comment on these things from time to time.  But I will mostly leave this sphere to the many, many people who know more about it than I do.
3. An attempt to demonstrate that I’m hip or funny. I’m not. And pretending or trying to prove that I am just makes me anxious.

(If anyone is in doubt about the veracity of this claim to squareness, consider the aforementioned interest in The West Wing. Not only am I spending a lot of time watching an off-the-air TV show about politics, I’m doing it on my computer because we don’t have a TV. And until recently we were getting the DVDs from the public library.  Also, it’s a wild night if we watch two episodes instead of one and stay up past ten o’clock. Can I stop now?)

Things This Blog Is

1. A place to write about writing. This intimidated me at first. I have no plan to pontificate upon the proper use of the gerund.  Nor will I write mind-blowing posts about the creative use of metaphor in grant applications. I don’t claim a lot of expertise as a writer at this point. But I’m interested in learning and thinking about writing, and I’m looking forward to passing along what I find.
2. A forum for chewing on some of life’s persistent questions. (Ahem. That was a nod to NPR’s Prairie Home Companion, in case additional evidence was needed for #3 above.) I’m a woman, a wife, a mom. I’m smart and highly educated and ambitious. I’m happy with my job, but not entirely satisfied with my career.  I constantly find myself nudging at the edges of big issues: work/life balance, feminism, equality in marriage, how to be a role model for my daughter, and what I really want to be when I grow up.  Most of my friends think about these issues too, so I hope they’ll be interesting and relevant and not just an exercise in navel-gazing.

All of which would lead you to believe that the lack of a blog is not really a pressing issue in my life. (And if you had any doubt, you could check out all the reasons why starting a blog is an ill-advised venture for anyone.)

But the thing is that I’m a writer. I write well. I write professionally, a little bit. And most of all, I enjoy writing. Since I’ve begun to dip my tentative little toes into the freelance writing world, people have been telling me I need a blog. They base this claim on two main arguments:

1) It will raise my profile. Debatable, I say. First, people would have to find me. Second, they would have to be impressed enough to want to learn more about me, and then to hire me to write stuff for them. Seems like kind of a long shot.

2) It will be good practice. This one is much harder to argue with. Though I’m calling myself a freelance writer these days, and have a business card to prove it, clients are not exactly knocking down the door. Sometimes writing days involve a lot of staring at the screen and waiting for projects to materialize. Might as well spend that time writing, I figure. The discipline of knocking words together on a regular basis will be good for me, and the pressure to post regularly will help me overcome one of my biggest writer-fears: running out of ideas.

On the strength of these reasons, I got to the point of deciding, “Yeah, well… probably a good idea. Something to think about in the future.” And that, likely, is where I would have remained indefinitely if I had not stumbled across Penelope Trunk’s Guide to Blogging. There was a flyer up at my office about a talk she gave recently, and I checked out her website on my lunch break. There’s a lot of interesting stuff up there–for instance, the answer to how much money you need to be happy. But the thing that caught my eye was the guide to blogging–particularly these pearls:

Blogging is essential for a good career. A well-executed blog sets you apart as an expert in your field.

Don’t tell yourself you’ll do it tomorrow. Blogging is about the courage to say something. Don’t worry about being stupid because trust me, no one is reading your blog. Post anything. You can nix bad posts later. For now just start writing.

So here I am. Hello, world! (Hello? Anybody?) That’s it for now, but I’ll be back soon.