Blogging for Community

I start a new adventure this week. I will again be an independent woman for about 10 days. As I prepare to drive 20 hours cross-country alone, I’m thinking a lot.

For 2 and a half years, I was in Zambia without much community. The blog I kept helped me feel connected, heard.

This pic of the Awesome Dawsons was taken for our church directory.
Our free 8x10 sits in a gawdy frame on our dresser to represent our presence in our little in-law apartment. :)

After Mark and I got married, it took awhile to get settled into Denver, but we had a sweet community and enjoyed newlywed life so much.

Moving to Austin was much harder than I anticipated, and I’ve struggled to find not only a job, but personal connection with like-minded people. We play ultimate frisbee thrice a week, so we've made friends there, but the extent of our conversations is usually the great plays we made during the game.

India, needless to say (if you got my updates last summer), was even harder and more lonely, as Mark went off to the office every day, and I tried to find something to distract myself from the heat – when I wasn’t caring for my sick husband.

Now, we’re onto yet another (Harrisonburg, Virginia for May and June) – then ANOTHER (Cape Town, South Africa for July-November) – new place where we will have to start relationships fresh.

During my freshman year at JBU, Kristen Gilfillan and I became close friends. I think a lot of it was because we both missed our own homes so much. She has helped me to understand and appreciate my desire to share history with friends and to be known. One of my most obvious characteristics is loyalty. I’m a long-term friend. So, as I head out again, I want to invite you to be part of this community.

I’ve done the group email thing a lot, but keeping track of addresses and making sure everyone gets every email has become a pain. Hopefully most of you have been in the loop. (If not, blame technology, not that I didn’t try to send it to you!)

So the time has come.  I’ve thought about starting a blog a bunch of times. I’m ready to do it now. Maybe I'll even take some more pictures. Yes, it’s lame that it’s online, and I don’t want to miss opportunities to connect with real, live people who are in the same physical location as me. But I want to badly to share life and experiences with old friends and kindred. ("True friends are always together in spirit.” – Anne Shirley) And in my loyalty/faithfulness/dependability, I’m pretty confident to say that I will post regularly. And thanks to Devi http://dailybreadandbutter.wordpress.com/2013/03/27/facebook-instagram-privacy-significance/ for her beautiful blogging and honest, I am forewarned of the difficult balance of honesty and thinking the world revolves around my life.