Hello, Goodbye

Our friend, Holly, has decided to drop off the face of blogdom. I just found out about this when I visited another friend's new blog, and she mentioned it in the comments. I haven't heard, therefore, if it was just too time-consuming, or if she felt she was running out of ideas, or what, but I thought I would take the opportunity to share some of my own thoughts on blogging. This is actually a re-post of something I wrote on one of our many top-secret, hidden blogs, which I'm not going to link to, as that would force a downgrade of its top-secret clearance. Anyway, I wrote this one night (1/27/08) after going to see the band, Scarlet Snow, perform at a local coffee shop in Winder (it's kind of long, sorry; I was new to blogging at the time):
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Why Not Blog?

So, honestly, what does one talk about on a blog? Is this to be a political blog? a stream-of-consciousness collection of random daily thoughts? tech help? music reviews? family pictures? or what?

I have no idea. All I know is that, at times, I feel a desperate longing to express myself, to voice my opinions to the world whether it wants to hear them or not. Not a need to be accepted, necessarily, but a need to say something.

My biggest problem with this need is time. I spend at least 9 hours a day at work, with a 20+ minute commute each way, for a total of, usually, 10 or more hours away from home. After that, I ache to spend time with my family, and so I try to get in time to play with my young children before their bedtime, after which is finally some time alone with my wife. This time together typically concludes because we're both just physically exhausted and ready to stumble off to sleep. So, the songs in my heart, the novel ideas stirring around in my brain, the random thoughts that I might post on a blog, even the pictures of my children that I might post on a website for extended family and friends to enjoy, never come to fruition. And thus, we get a blog started in mid-November that isn't updated until late January. At nearly 1AM.

And so, I would like to give the full credit for this, my first real post on this blog, to the provider of tonight's Mochaccino, without whom I would not be awake right now. Thank you, Latté Da. (I was going to link to their website, but I can't find one, and I'm not staying up any later to try. Instead, I'm linking to a Mochaccino recipe. Enjoy.)
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So, there you have it. To Holly, I don't know why you say goodbye; to Ren, I say hello.