Feeling my way along...

Hi everybody,

It's been a interesting day and pretty emotional, too. It occurred to me very early this morning that it has been 4 months since Hurricane Ike made landfall in Galveston, Texas (September 13, 2008). I spent the morning looking for pictures and updates on what happened at my favorite beach at Galveston Island State Park.

What I saw made me very sad. I wrote a blog post about it...or started one. I decided to file it in my journal instead as it got very long, complicated, and very personal. Instead I posted the picture and brief note you see below in my previous post.

I imagine stuff regarding the hurricane will come up as we go along. It had such an impact on our lives down here. It's still too emotional and hard to process some of it right now. When I try to write about it, everything kind of pours out in a jumbled mess. Probably therapeutic for me but confusing for you.

I'm still feeling my way along here, learning new things about blogging, HTML, and all sorts of intricacies involved in starting a new blog. I guess confusion is a normal state of affairs considering. I won't bore you with a list of my adventures and misadventures. ("At least not right now," she said with an evil grin.).

I still have most of my hair and I'm about as sane as I've ever been able to claim being so I guess I'm doing okay. I have learned so much...and yet there is so much more to learn. A little overwhelming sometimes...especially when you don't know the word to use or the questions to ask about what you want to do or what is going wrong. I LOVE it though!

On a less technical note, I really enjoy having conversations and writing letters. I tend to write letters like I'm sitting and talking face-to-face with someone...a little better organized, I hope...but chatty and informal. I want to bring some of that informality into my blog posts. I've done so much academic, technical, and report writing that I can get awfully serious in some of my other kinds of writing.

Blogging is really new to me. Right now, I'm still figuring out how to put all the different writing styles together. Sometimes it's easier/more comfortable to hide behind the more formal styles of writing. (I think that's pretty common for writers). I'm not entirely sure yet what or how much to share.

I guess I'll just have to pretend you're sitting right here with me and start talking. That's what I did when I first learned to really love letter writing. I threw out the rules and just started writing. I hope you will comment and give me feedback. It's so much easier to be less formal when we interact and I know what you think and feel about things.

It's been a long and emotional day, so I'm going to close now.

Hugs and blessings,
Katy