Last night my husband and I had a visit from his brother and his wife. Now I haven’t seen them for about 4 years. We used to see them quite a lot, but then something happened and the SIL (sister-in-law) got miffed and they stopped visiting and calling.

No big deal to me. Now that my husband is disabled and severely limited in what he can do, we’ve noticed an upswing is sibling visits. I guess they figure he might die any day, so they want to be able to say they saw him before he died.

It’s sad to me, that it took a health crisis for his siblings to come see him. Now I know, some of you will say the road goes both ways, and you would be right. It does. My husband was never one for visiting, especially when all his siblings lived out-of-town. The reasons we didn’t visit are varied, so I won’t bore you with that.

The main reason for this post is my SIL and I were talking and she asked me what I was doing with myself these days. I told her, taking care of the husband, and blogging.

Her reaction? “What’s that?”

Now how do you describe blogging to a non-blogger, or one who is only on the internet to play games on Facebook? I don’t know how any of you do it, but I gave her this description.

Blogging is like an online journal. It’s where you write stories, fiction or non-fiction. You write about whatever comes to mind. You write about what you want to write about. Or post photos, or a rant, or just write to write.

Her reaction? “Why?!!”

That gave me pause. Why indeed? Why do I blog? Why do any of us blog? To see our words out there and appreciated is one, I mean, who doesn’t enjoy others reading what they write and hitting that ‘like’ button. I know it still gives me a bit of a thrill, even after more than two years of blogging. I love it when you guys hit ‘like’, or even better leave a comment!

But, how do you get that across to a non-blogging, non-writer?

So many thoughts rushed through my mind. Thankfully, before I could try to explain, she went on to some other subject. That’s one nice thing about having a conversation between an introvert (myself) and an extrovert (SIL), pause a few seconds and she’s talking about something else.

Don’t get me wrong, I like all my in-laws, they are for the most part good people. They have busy lives with kids and grandkids, jobs, etc. We had busy lives too, my husband worked shift work, so every week was different. Now that he is disabled and almost bedridden, the dynamics have changed. Between him and me and between him and his siblings. It happens.

The question of why do I blog still lingered in the back of my mind this morning as I drank my first cup of coffee. I’m still not sure if I could explain to my SIL the pleasure I get from doing it. From writing my blog posts, to visiting, commenting, liking and the interaction between me and my blogging friends.

The short answer I could have given her was, it gives me great satisfaction and pleasure. The long answer would be this rambling post that I just wrote. 🙂

 

Why do YOU blog? How would you have answered my SIL?