A blog about nothing (and anything)

some notes in my commonplace book

If you watched the television show Seinfeld, you might remember the episode where Jerry and George were pitching a sitcom idea to NBC executives.  George comes up with the idea of "a show about nothing."  I thought of that when I was planning my blog, because I wasn't sure if it should have a specific theme or focus.  Would it be a "blog about nothing"?  

I've been hooked on a variety of blog genres myself - mostly family/parenting, homeschool/education and frugal/money-saving blogs.  There are so many categories of blogs - fitness and health, religion, politics, news, history, travel, etc.  Apparently, there is also a category called lifestyle blogs.  I wasn't sure what that means, but it sounded a bit too fancy and domestic for me.  When I googled the term, I found an article "Better Homes and Bloggers" that appeared in bitch magazine in 2012.  The article's tagline reads "Are lifestyle blogs a new way for women to compare themselves and come up short?"  That sounds pretty sucky.  The article defines lifestyle blogs as those "which focus largely on traditionally feminine topics such as fashion, home decor, crafts, food, and family."  I think I've seen some of these blogs...like the mom with five or six kids who runs a hobby farm and sells fresh eggs, homeschools, crafts excessively and writes books about it, cooks perfectly healthy and well-balanced meals every day, sews all her family's clothing, and concocts all their personal, healthcare and cleaning formulas from scratch.  I'm only exaggerating a little.  As it turns out - I'm not much interested in fashion or home decor, but I do like crafts and gardening.  Together with my husband, I am involved in all the basic stuff that's involved in running a household - cooking, baking, cleaning, decorating, shopping, repairing, etc.  But these are not necessarily the things I want to write about.  Also, I'm a minimalist.  And not a foodie at all.  We keep things really simple around here.     

When I think about what I do like to write about, there are some general themes:  family life; education and lifelong learning; nature; writing, journaling and other types of creative expression; books and reading; my neighborhood and city.  I like to tell stories and to inject some humor when I can.  A healthy dose of self-deprecation keeps me grounded.  If you read my first post, you know that I procrastinated in deciding on a blog address.  I also fretted over the blog name, since my blog isn't meant to fill any particular niche or attract any particular readership.  I decided on "commonplace" because I had started keeping a commonplace book - a notebook where I write favorite quotes, and passages or notes from books I'm reading.  People have been keeping commonplace books since at least the Middle Ages.   

According to Wikipedia:

Commonplace books (or commonplaces) were a way to compile knowledge, usually by writing information into books.  Such books were essentially scrapbooks filled with items of every kind: medical recipes, quotes, letters, poems, tables of weights and measures, proverbs, prayers, legal formulas. Commonplaces were used by readers, writers, students, and scholars as an aid for remembering useful concepts or facts they had learned. Each commonplace book was unique to its creator's particular interests.

Of  course, there's also the meaning of "commonplace" as something not new or unusual, something that happens commonly.  And indeed much of what we experience in life is commonplace, the regular day-to-day stuff that happens as we go about our lives.  So I might use my blog as a sort of electronic commonplace book, and I might also use it as a place to write about commonplace, day-to-day things and experiences.  As far as "curious" goes, I can work that word's two meanings as well.  There are many things I'm curious about and want to learn more about.  These are often the topics I read and write about.  But, there's also "curious," as in strange and unusual.  I find it fairly curious, in that sense, that there is a word to describe mishearing lyrics or spoken words.  And that's why I wrote about "mondegreen" yesterday. 

A blog about nothing?  Rather a blog about anything that's commonplace or curious!