And so it has begun...

I've been meaning to start a blog for a while now. Ever since I became one of the contributing writers to the blog we recently started at work, I've been saying, "I should do this for myself."

But the truth is, I've been blogging all my life. It just wasn't called that. It was called "keeping a diary" when I was little- where I started every entry with a detailed account of the weather, what I had for homework, what food we had for dinner and the names of the boys I currently loved. You know, the basics.

I then moved on to poetry- god help us all. I would write a poem dripping with teen angst and emotion and then proceed, in a strangely jovial way, to visit each room of the house to show my work off to anyone who would read it. (Hey look at my pain, isn't it nicely worded?!)

I worked my way up to "journaling" as an adult- a fancy way of saying "keeping a sporadic diary." To this day, my journaling ranges from traditional entries that span a certain time period, all the way to hastily scrawled "to-do lists" housed in fancy notebooks. Either which way, unknown to me at the time, I've documented a life.

And that's how we arrive at this particular venture. Blogging. I'm that same teen-age girl, all grown-up, with that same fascinating need to have people read my stuff. And I'm still documenting a life, just in a different venue- with a potentially wider audience. "Potentially" is the key word... I'm not kidding myself to think that millions will read this. It's not like when Patricia and I were little and decided to paint rocks and sell them outside our house and I went to bed that night having dreams that we stopped traffic with the line of people who wanted to buy those rocks. (The next morning, we set up the table in the driveway and had three sales- our Mom, our Grandma, and our next door neighbor. Reality sort of bites sometimes, but when you break it down- we were 75 cents richer in our youth because of that venture!)

So basically, I'm out to share my thoughts with the select few who will choose to read this blog. But more importantly, I'm out to spread some positive vibes while I'm at it. The whole point of this blog, as partially evidenced by the title and URL name, is to share the reasons why I think life is good. It would have been even more apparent had the name, "Life is good" not been taken already. (Damn you mystery blogger who thinks life is good also, damn you!)

Looking back at past diary entries/journals/poetry I've written, one of the most overwhelming things I've come across is an undying sense of hope. Even in the darkest of days, I can see hope in my writing. I can see optimism where you think there shouldn't be any. And for that I am grateful.

And so now, hopefully without being too saccharine about it, I want to try my hand at the next phase of my writing. Whenever I come across something that makes me remember why life is good, I'm going to write it down. Here's hoping this list will never be complete...