When I started this blog, it was mostly so I could write stuff down and get it out of my head. I didn’t know if anybody would bother reading it, or if they did, if they would find it interesting. What’s been coolest about this is, people HAVE found it interesting, and have shared it with each other and had conversations about it on Facebook. Even famous people (whose book you should go buy right now. No seriously, I’ll wait. And no, she’s not giving me any kickbacks, I just like her book that much) have shared stuff I’ve written. And what my readers think about what I write, what they say about what I write, is often not what I thought people would think when I wrote it. Which is just WAY WAY WAY cool.

Let me give an example: the Judgy McJudgerson post. I wrote it not thinking about this one friend of mine at all–she’s never Judgy McJudgerson’d me and I think of her as super supportive of the moms in our circle. But when she read it, she thought, “Oh wow, that is so me. Beth just called me out on my BS and she is right.” What? Really? Turns out she’s what a mutual friend of ours calls a “car seat nazi.” I had no idea, perhaps because I don’t post photos of my kids in their car seats that often, or when I do, they are properly buckled? Anyway, she read what I wrote and took away the lesson I intended (take a deep breath and remember your friend isn’t an idiot before you comment), even though, I didn’t intend that message to be directed at her.

Meanwhile, some other friends had a discussion about it in the context of feeling like you are a crappy mom who doesn’t have it together and being bitter about the moms who DO seem have it together. So, they are not judging someone for being a bad mom, they are judging them for being too good of a mom. Which also comes from a place of fear of our own inadequacies as parents, right? And THEN they talked about Judgy McJudgersoning themselves. Because we are all Judgy McJudgerson. Deeeeeeeep.

All of this reminds me of good times in college, living in the dorms and staying up waaaaay too late talking about deep thoughts. It felt cool, like our brains were going to change the world with their amazing ideas that got better and better as they bounced around the room off each other’s brains. That’s what blogging feels like to me–I launch an idea, and the people who read it take it and add to it and make it richer and more powerful.

So, thank you to all of you for reading, and then thinking and talking about what I write. This blogging thing kicks ass!