mulberryshoots

Well, I did it. It took me ALL DAY to put together the 200 posts of the blog so far into a hard copy volume the way that I wanted it to be. There wasn’t really that much to do after the transfer of the posts to the website (Blog2Print) went through. That worked after the third try. But the rest of it took hours: adding 8 pages of family photos to MyPages, deciding about the front and back cover photographs, what the dedication page would look like. Now I can see what book publishing people do for a living.

Because it was the last day for a 20% discount (which for me was the make-or-break to do it in the first place,) the website was sluggish, no, that’s not the right description: it was a breakdown lane. The photo upload feature was hard to find, never mind use– and the appearance of that little multi-colored spinning ball made my heart drop every time it stopped things cold, you had to exit the site and it wouldn’t save. Then you couldn’t get back into your current draft because it wouldn’t accept your user ID and password and when you were in again, it wouldn’t open up your current draft, get the picture?

While it was frustrating electronically to put the book together, what wasn’t a drag was finally being able to see the whole package, all 246 pages of colorful posts. As you know, I have wanted to be a writer for a long time. The novel I wrote a few years ago felt like a creative endeavor at the time, but novels are not what I’m good at. A year or so ago, I began to suspect that “utopia was in my own backyard”: the essay/memoir format and intuitively deciding when and what to post felt just right.

And so I have spilled my guts here, pondering how to live more intentionally, dressed up with flowers, food and family memories–

Thank you to all the random strangers who touch the blog and then fly off again with compliments written in syntax showing that English is definitely not your first language. Many thanks to those who have become my friends who live in places here in the U.S. like New York, Mississippi, Texas, the United Kingdom, Seoul, Korea, Singapore and Australia.

The internet is truly an incredible thing. Its medium has opened up a dialogue with virtual strangers who share what’s most important to us as humans, as women, as mothers, wives and sisters.

Thank you all.

Katherine