To the most amazing blog, created by Kelle Hampton. For those of you who haven't had a chance to peek into her world - I highly recommend it.
I think I need to check myself in to the Betty Ford Clinic for Blog Addiction. I was up to 2am last night (or this morning) just reading post, after post about the going's on in her life.
Maybe it's because so much of what she has done, I aspire to. I love photography - I love taking photo's of anything and everything. Especially the Guru and the Toddler - they are my main inspiration for everything. And although I'm not as blessed as Kelle is to have a partner keen to partake in my photography joy, I like to think that when he does think to pick up the camera and photograph me with my gorgeous Toddler that it's for posterity and out of love.
But I am fully aware that photographs are often taken after screeches of 'Get the camera for goodness sake, we're doing something cute together!' or 'Why am I forever taking photo's of you and her - get the camera and take some of ME and her!!'. Not the same. And the photo's generally reflect that. Blurry, directionally challenged, or else taking a photo of something across the room from where we are doing our cute thing together.
I also love that Kelle has embraced the challenges life has handed her - and she is honest about everything. I don't think I could have that kind of honesty out there for everyone to witness. I find it hard to take negative feedback on personal matters, and even if I haven't heard it, I have the sort of panicky mentality that makes it up for me, convincing myself that everyone thinks I'm terrible.
But that's just me.
I also love to type. I've always been a better communicator on paper/email/text etc than I ever have been face to face. Maybe that's because I hate confrontation, I hate public speaking, I hate getting bad news, or even worse, giving it. For me, it's always felt that face to face communication was always saved for the negative things in life. But anything on paper was always comforting. Which is where my love of reading comes in to play, I suppose. In books, even when something goes wrong there is always an outcome that over-rides the sad. Especially anything written by Jane Austen. But again, fiction is my love - anything too real and I run for the hills!
Maybe I'm too much of a dreamer, and maybe I need to be a little more realistic now I'm a wife and mother. Put away my dreams of Jane Austen romance and everything being happy, always. Because that's not what life is - nothing is perfect and facing up to the reality of life is hard, but worth it.
And I guess that's the best thing I get out of Kelle's blog. That life, no matter how challenging or different from the plan we had in our mind, is wonderful. And while facing the truths of life takes tears, courage and determination, the outcome is amazing and worth every second.
