First post

So this is my new blog! My third, to be exact, after "Welcome to Ridgecrest" and "Magpieland" (the latter has been mothballed, though I can still look at it). I started blogging in May 2009, when my twin boys were only a year old. I wrote the Ridgecrest blog for four years (2009-2013), then when we moved back to Boulder I wrote the Magpieland blog for about five and a half years (2013-2018), then I took a few months break, and now here we are again.

I closed down Magpieland because it was full of embarrassing personal stuff -- those five and a half years were stressful ones. Which is not to say the four years previous were a walk in the park, but there was the consolation of baby/toddler twins to write funny things about. Elementary school age twins are not as funny. Also, I've had a series of stressful jobs since we came back to Boulder. There was a flood. Etc. There was also plenty of stuff that would be embarrassing to the twins themselves, were one of their friends to find the blog and read it someday. (The Ridgecrest blog is FULL of embarrassing things, but my feeling about that is that it's OK to do embarrassing things when you're under five.)

For a while I thought my blogging days were done. The best way to avoid embarrassing yourself (or your kids) is not to tell the world any of the dumb things you do. I also spent quite a bit of time considering a "professional" blog, which someone recommended I start, where I would use my real name and write serious posts about writing and editing, things someone might conceivably want to pay me to do.

I came to these conclusions: (1) I like to blog. (2) My kids enjoy my blog and I can always delete whatever they decide is too embarrassing. (3) I think most professional blogs are boring and fake-sounding. People can hire me, or not hire me, for reasons other than my blog. So I decided to go ahead and start a new blog, and here we are. I pledge to myself and the kids to try not to be so embarrassing (and to delete what goes too far), and I further pledge to myself not to try to sound professional. It's just not me. I'm also continuing to use a pen name rather than my real one, though my true identity is easy to guess and that's fine.

So there you have it. Oh, the name. I thought of lots of great names for the new blog, but they were all taken. Then I started trying to incorporate the word "story." Margaretstory (and Margaretsstory) were taken. Magpiestory is too much like Magpieland. Hmm, other birds? Then I remembered my alter ego, Flicker. Ergo, Flickerstory. I like the name -- I feel that it should be a real word. Like clerestory, which is something to do with church windows, not blogs or birds. Anyway, Flickerstory is the new name and this is the new blog. And it's December! And life is hopping! So here we go.