Legacy Blogging

Legacy Blogging preserves the treasures of our lives for ourselves, our families and the world at large.    Maybe we are too close to our everyday lives to see those treasures all around us.  But we know in our hearts and our guts that the most important things we pass on is our values, our life lessons and our stories, values not valuables.   

A recent Allianz American Legacies study confirms this gut feeling.

They found that non-financial items that parents leave behind—like ethics, morals, faith, and religion—are 10 times more important to both boomers and their parents than the financial aspects of inheritance.   What an unexpected and wonderful surprise to find most people in agreement on the most important things to pass on!

So how best to leave behind your lessons from life and your stories?  Why a blog, of course. It’s easy, inexpensive and eternal so long as someone pays the hosting fees.

Blogging is a way to slow life down, to  Pause and take a few moments to capture the evanescence of life, even as it speeds by.

Blogging's a tool for rediscovery,  the way we find out what we think, what we value, who we are. 


That’s why so many people, some 32% of all bloggers are turning to blogs as a way of recording their lives and thoughts, as Dave Weinberger says, writing their way into history one blog  post at a time.

No one writes better about blogging to enrich your life  then Ronni Bennett.   She, like I, believe there are no ordinary lives,  and that stories are your gift to the future.

They are also a gift here and now. When you write about what you love, whatever it is you love -  – sports, crocheting, cooking, design, nature, your faith, or your life in general, you are enriching the legacy you leave behind.  You are also giving a gift to people you don't know, making the world a richer place.

You can share the things you wished you had known like Millie Garfield.

Or the pleasure you have in growing and giving away tomatoes from your hundred plants and sharing your perspective at 92 years of age.

Or your passionate feelings about nature along with sublime photographs from your walks like Paula.

You can even write hilariously about being a constipated Mom with no other inhibitions.
 
If your dream is to visit 1000 bars in New York City in one year like the Barman, you’ll find people around the world cheering you on.

We spend so much time working, yet speak very little outside our work world about what we feel about the work we do.  The Doctor is In writes about the terrible power of being a surgeon that will be eye-opening to his children one day and is to us right now.

Just writing about the most difficult things in your life is therapeutic and can be of great solace to a fellow sufferer, now and in the future.    BBC reporter Ivan Noble didn’t surrender to fear when he learned about his brain tumor, but decided to write about it leaving behind a Truly Noble legacy and showing others with cancer how to face a terminal illness with humor and grace.

Or you can just be a place of refreshment.   Sometimes when I’m hard at work and need a break, but don’t have time to get away,  I wander over to Tom Cunliffe’s Brightfield, read about his rambles look at his photographs and come away refreshed.

Leaving behind your lessons and stories is not something you do all at once.  You do it bit by bit, one blog post at a time.

You know those old photographs you keep in a box? Once you start going through them, you want to tell stories about people you loved and they  become easy to write.  Melinama memorializes her aunt, her haven in her blog that she likens to a message in a bottle.

Soon you are including those stories and photos in your blog along with your current ones which, if you are Claude and Blogging in Paris, become even more beautiful when combined in a Flickr mosaic.

Its appreciating, saving, and sharing those bits of your life that you love like  Dervala,  an Irish traveler  who writes

Hello World.   Here I am,  I love this and I think that and this is what I saw and this is what I believe and this is what I learned.  This is what I give you.   Follow the tracks and you’ll see who I am and who I was.   This is my legacy.  Thank you.