Now that’ we’re getting closer to Christmas, I thought back to last Christmas Eve, when Jennifer was seven months pregnant with Tara and had an allergic rection to mangoes. The resulting blog post is probably the best thing I have ever written, and it’s also the last thing I tagged as a Best Of post. Let’s see, December 24… hrm hrm eighteen… carry the one… I haven’t written anything good in about a year.

I struggle with writing decent blog posts to the point that a large portion of the blog is me complaining to myself about my own blog and the lack of quality writing in it. Of course, there is the occasional praise from friends and family and strangers–all of it welcome–but one is always one’s own worst critic.

For a while, I toyed with a more methodical approach to my writing by actually sitting down and planning out on paper what I was going to write. This takes a lot of discipline, and a lot of time, and in my case, the results weren’t any better. I do think I need to go back to it, because it does help to make the posts more readable, and I can see more clearly when I go to often between points of interest.

I think that a good reason that my own writing doesn’t seem as good to me is that I run across more and more really good blogs. There really are some spectacular writers out there…. some are listed in my about me page, but there really are like a zillion good blogs out there.

I grew up hearing how good I was at a lot of different things–playing the piano, reading, writing, drawing, using the computer. It turns out there are a lot of people that are good at all of those things. I also heard quite a bit about the importance of being better than everybody else, and for a long time, I was. Then the world got bigger, and there were a lot more everybodies, and there were a lot of people better than me at everything. I can’t even claim to have a decent self-image problem by comparison.

In spite of that, I am happy that people enjoy reading my blog, family and strangers alike. I am glad to have photography as a hobby that I can enjoy and share with others. I can’t say enough good things about familyhood, even though I need to find a way to spend more time feeling like a rock star, and less time feeling like a roadie.

If I were a really good writer, or if I had spent the time to outline this post, I would here include a witty and poignant closing which leaves the reader with a warm fuzzy smile. If you want that, go read some of those zillions of better blogs. I’ve decided instead to be happy with this post just as it is.