Let me explain...

...No, there is too much. Let me sum up.
1) blog post #1
The setting: I have been contemplating this whole blog thing for a long time, and wanted a really good, fitting blog name for it. Well, turns out that it's not the most pressing thing in my life and I have had a hard time thinking of a name that I felt worked for my blog. I know it's not that big a deal, but I still wanted to have one I liked.
Scene 1: (USU dorms, summer 2010) I decided I'm going to blog and write the above post with the intent of creating the blog next time I have a few minutes and posting it. It doesn't happen and the entry just gets saved to my computer.
Scene 2: (Logan, yesterday) I decided again that I should actually do this whole blog thing. I get on after church while I'm eating dinner and spend the entire break between church and ward prayer not coming up with a name for my blog. Feel like I waste a lot of time on this pretty minor detail...
Scene 3: (Logan, today) I come up with a name and create the blog. I pull the old post from my files where it was saved an posted it first, cuz that's what it was meant to be, the first blog post. I haven't actually read it since I wrote it I think, so I hope it makes sense still = )

2) Rome.
It might seem strange, considering I've never actually been to Rome, that "always a roman" would be my blog address, and the title of the blog what it is. So, here's the thing: Rome is the name of the house I live in. As you walk in the door you will immediately notice a big banner hanging in our living room that says "When in Rome..." and we change the ending for every party or occasion we celebrate. So, all the inhabitants of the house are naturally called "romans", and once a roman, always a roman. Hence the web address, and the title.

So there you have it. Two really long, random posts to start off with. In the future they'll probably not be so long, but probably just as random. That's just how I roll.

#1

SO, I have decided to start a blog. I personally believe that my life is extremely ordinary and don't know really what I'll ever have to write about or who will want to read it, but a few things have prompted me over that last few weeks to start writing. I feel like recounting these things, so I will:

First off, my family has a little tradition that began back when my oldest sisters got married and our family got a little more spread out. We've never been great phone talkers, except for my mom who can talk to her mom for hours on end, so we began to write letters each Sunday detailing the events of the previous week and the things we've learned and enjoyed. Sandra, my second oldest sister, is not very good at sending these e-mails so she began a blog and will just post things periodically about her life, kids, husband, and various other adventures. I find that I also am not very good at writing these e-mails. Not because I'm communicationally challenged like Sandra is (love ya babe!) but because I don't feel like I have that much t o say at the end of each week. I don't have a husband in school/work, kids with funny stories, or even grand adventures with my friends. I feel, whether this is correct or not, that my life is just full of the day to day ordinary things that are of no interest to anyone not directly connected to the situation so I feel bad making people read an email full of thins they probably have no interest in besides the fact that it means I am alive and well. So now I can yack away and people can keep up on my life as much as they wish without me feeling like I am inflicting my random thoughts on anyone.

Also I find that I am not much of a journal keeper. I do frequently however have thoughts I would like to record whether or not anyone wants to read them. I know that this blog is not really a replacement for the daily journal I am not keeping (I do keep a study journal quite faithfully) but it will at least be a support to the journal I don't write in. And who knows, maybe I'll find I enjoy detailing my days so much I will start to keep a real journal.

One more thing that I like about the idea of a blog came from facebook this last week or two. I was on facebook and saw that a friend of mine who was a session director's wife and was with us for a week at EFY had a blog. I opened it just to see what it was like and ended up engrossed in reading about her life and struggles and family. I learned so much about her just by reading her blog. I was amazed. I'm not sure why this encouraged me to write a blog, I would think that it would on the contrary deter me from writing one because I am naturally a very private person. However it did encourage the idea of a blog and pointed out another usefulness of it.

The final prompting came today. For several months now I have been contemplating this thought of keeping a blog. This summer I've been doing EFY again and was sitting in my dorm room in Logan today after church and started watching Mormon Messages on lds.org. There's one called “My New Life” that is all about a mom who was in a small plane crash that she and her husband survived but are now not as pretty anymore. It's really cute. But in it she talks about writing a blog and the therapy it provided as she copes with the changes and challenges of her new life. Now, I don't need therapy (I think...) but as I watched it the idea of a blog really stuck out to me again. In the past the idea has come up. I've even looked at a couple different blog hosting sites online, but have never really started one. In fact I'm writing this post before I even have a blog to post it on. But after watching that video I kept thinking of what I would do with a blog and what I would say, and I want this to be my first post, so here you go.

I hope you enjoy. If not, you don't have to read it. And that's why I love blogs.