Things I’m afraid to tell you

Part one: “Nothing in moderation”

It’s been quite a while since I pinned ”things I’m afraid to tell you.” It’s also been a long time since I’ve blogged anything. I’ve been giving a lot of thought to this idea (and my goals with blogging). Here’s what I’ve been thinking about.

There are so many things that I want to blog about because I’m passionate about them and I want to share my excitement with anyone who is interested. When I sit down to start a post, my goal is to spend 20 minutes from start to finish. This rarely happens for many reasons. The primary reason being that I’m afraid I’m not relatable and who is going to read my blog if no one can relate to me?

I’ve recently noticed a pattern that has developed throughout my adulthood; once I learn certain things, I can’t go back to my old way of thinking. When something causes a shift like this I do a lot of research. Once I feel I have enough information, I make a decision about how to act on that information and then I embrace my decision 100%. (Not that I don’t keep an open mind to continuing to grow and change.)

One example of a shift like this happened when I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I wasn’t expecting it at all. I love Barbara Kingsolver’s fiction, and decided to pick up this non-fiction book on a whim. Reading it, I learned about many problems with modern food production. Then I watched Food Inc, read numerous books and blogs and listened to many podcasts on the topic. I started going to a farmer’s market and talking to farmers growing food in my area. I joined a meetup group focusing on traditional foods and found sources for animal products that are local, organic and grass-fed/pastured so that I don’t have to make any compromises.

Things really got different when I figured out that a lot of “healthy” food was actually making me sick. I stopped eating a lot of foods that most people would consider very healthy. All this happened over a couple of years, but now I’m at a point so far removed from the standard American diet that I fear most people won’t be able to relate to the time and money that I spend on food or my opinions about what healthy food actually looks like. Instead of writing about the deeper parts of this journey, I share quick recipes that I make which look the most like “normal” food so that I can feel more like a regular person.

This example of my “nothing in moderation” attitude came to mind because I wanted to answer my cousin’s question about how eating a Whole30 diet has effected our grocery budget. I still can’t bring myself to admit my food budget on my blog (and I’ll tell you why later, when I write part two). Instead, I tried to figure out a way to write about my food budget without actually sharing the dollar amount. Ultimately I gave up and pinned Robb Wolf’s recent e-book, The Paleo Diet Budget Shopping Guide.

I’ve had similar feelings about green living (thinking I should have documented our journey more, and that people won’t be able to relate to where we’re at now). It makes me question what I’m writing and often leave draft posts hanging around indefinitely. I think I would like to try to start writing posts that aren’t so intimidating, for example instead of the huge kitchen post for the green tour I’ve been trying to write, I’m thinking it would be much better to just take it one small piece at a time and write several posts instead of one huge list of all the eco-friendly steps we’ve made in our kitchen. What do you think? Should I reveal the “real” me more?