I am writing 31 fighting scarcity. I will be collecting them all at the starting point. I hope you join me this month. 

I have been dumping my words out into the internet for a minute now. I started on another blog in 2010, and moved here a year later when I was on maternity leave with Priscilla.

Priscilla is four, sleeps through the night, and can get her own snack. I sometimes still think of myself as a newcomer. That isn’t even a little bit true.

I have been blogging long enough that some of my closest friends are bloggers, that we have met people from all over the country and housed people in my home that I had never actually met until they brought their bags into my house. It has shaped me in ways I never expected and I am deeply grateful.

But it is sometimes hard to put your words out there multiple times a week. Blogging has changed and there aren’t as many comments. But I love the discussions we have on Facebook and the interactions I have on Twitter, and I love seeing what you are up to on the daily via your Instagram feed. How cute are our kids? Almost as cute as our pets! Sometimes you have no idea what is happening with your post and whether or not what you are saying matters.

Scarcity tells me that my words only matter if the stats bar is higher than yesterday. Scarcity tells me that my words don’t matter because there were no private emails in my box saying they did. Scarcity tells me that only certain things count, and then as soon as I hit that mark it doesn’t count anymore.

Abundance tells me that saying it matters. That just the act of the saying is enough of a reason to do it, that the saying matters because it shapes me, and my shaping is enough, every person’s changing shape, changes the shape of the world. Even if just a little bit, that little bit counts. Abundance also tells me I never really know what my words are doing after they enter the world.

I was reminded this weekend of all of this. I received an email asking me about this post I wrote about why I stopped telling the stories of my first students. One I had written as a guest post for another blog a few years ago. Apparently this person uses it in a class that teaches teachers. I was flattered and encouraged that this piece of writing had shaped something I had no idea about. This interaction also reminded just how much this piece of writing shaped me. It was the first time I wrote about that life. It was the first time I talked about the things I had done wrong. The comments on the blog no longer even available made me consider that maybe I did have a story worth telling. I started my manuscript a year later.

I know the majority of my audience doesn’t blog. But I also know that most people feel as though the thing you are doing doesn’t matter. The diaper changing, the feeding, the laundry, the emails, the paper work, the driving. Does this thing matter?

Yes. It matters because you matter.