Although I’ve maintained about four-five blogs in my day — some for work, one for book promotion, one for my pregnancy and baby journey — I’ve never kept a personal blog. And it’s for the same reason I’ve never faithfully kept a diary: I think it’s a waste of time. Or, at least, I thought it was a waste of time until recently.

Semi-recently I had a baby and left my full-time job to pursue freelance work from home. I have a wonderful God-given opportunity to edit a magazine on a freelance basis, but I haven’t really pursued many writing gigs. The biggest reason why is that I haven’t had any ideas on what to write.

Now this is just plumb ridiculous. As an editor, I can come up with an entire issue’s worth of story ideas to assign in a single day. Give me a couple of weeks and I’ll have the whole year planned out. But that’s the thing: the ideas are always for other people, unless it’s a story that doesn’t require original thought, like an interview.

So, as I pursued friends’ blogs recently (see blogroll), I realized: a blog is a perfect place to keep my writing sharp and the original ideas flowing. I also feel like I finally have the extra time to “burn,” if I continue to look at it that way, to maintain a personal blog. And I hope that this exercise turns into a necessary and productive part of my day that ultimately reaches someone else who can identify with my day-to-day struggles and triumphs.

And the fact that I ever considered a blog a waste of time is ridiculous as well because I’ve personally been ministered to and entertained by many blogs. Why I thought of them as a waste of time to me personally, I’ll probably never quite figure out.

So, with that … let me introduce myself: I’m Cara. I’m nearly 30. I have a wonderful husband named Jeff who is climbing the educational administrative ladder in the local public school system. We have a beautiful daughter named Madilyn who is our joy and delight. We have a sweet dog named Macey who we rescued but feel like she really rescued us. And we live in a beautiful home minutes from our church and Jeff’s family here in Central Florida.

To see my family, we travel in comfy airplanes to East Tennessee, which we just did last week for the Christmas holidays.

So, happy new year to all, and may this blog rescue me from my false sense of writer’s block.