I’m channelling all the feels through random memes these days. Feel free to comment and share your own.
As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence.
Benjamin Franklin
The months I’ve spent working on this blog have confirmed my suspicions — I’m a blogging dinosaur — an aged voice amongst a much savvier and more evolved technological species. But I feel like I still have some stories to tell so I’m not ready for extinction just yet!
Hi everyone. It’s me again. Taking time out of your very busy day to distract you with my musings. I’m so grateful you’ve landed here so I want to run a little something by you. What if I were trying to make a real go of this blogging thing? Sure, it’s a hobby now, a satisfying catharsis for my ideas about travel and motherhood and the professoriate. But would you be okay if we made this official? For example, would you subscribe to this blog for email updates or follow me on Instagram or Facebook? Would you take our relationship one step further and pin my stuff to your Pinterest boards?
I would be grateful if you would because I’d like to see where this could go. It’s really simple: just click those little icons over to the right of this text, and viola, we’re hooked up! (Also @beingbonmot if you’re more into searching.) If you’re here because we’re already going steady, thank you – our relationship is very important to me. (None of that Hannah Brown “This is why you don’t date two guys!” Bachelorette nonsense for me.)
In May, I promised to pledge $1 for every like, follow, etc. I received that month (my birthday month, no coincidence) to Bonton Farms in Dallas (see the original post here). I did increase my social media presence and subscriptions, but I fell short of my goal of 250. I’m so grateful for my friends, new and old. I always encourage my students to acknowledge shortcomings, especially in my fundraising class, so I want to be honest about the results of my efforts. I have learned so much from this experience already, and I genuinely want to connect my work here with causes I believe in. (More on this follow up very soon…)
My ultimate motivation is to grow in my connection with you, the reader, who should be doing something much more important than perusing this post. And thank you for that. I’d like this relatively tiny ripple of a site to begin to make waves big enough to surf on. I don’t have Ashton Kutcher/Kim Kardashian delusions here, but I wouldn’t be offended by a little more traffic. I’m simply putting it out there to see if there’s something to this whole ‘vision casting’ thing.
Listen, I don’t plan to quit my day job. That’s why I’m working on growth over the summer before I’m back in the classroom and in the thick of the motherhood juggle. As such, you might see more of me and Being Bon Mot for a little while. Thankfully this fossil has figured out how to schedule blog posts into the future, so look out!
I hope you like this work so far. And I hope you’ll take the time to comment and share and invite your real-life friends to follow Being Bon Mot. Sometimes I feel like I’m a bit all over the place with content. It’s reflective of the multiple identities I’m unapologetic for – mother, professor, wife, explorer, cynic, nerd – you get the picture. I’d love your feedback on the posts you read and ideas about what you’d like to see more of.
Those who know me know I am content with my small life here in Texas. I am happily married. I have two healthy, vibrant kids. And I happen to like my job (95% of the time – grading papers really sucks). But I’m also a woman in my early 40’s trying to steer clear of a midlife crisis. I have a voice and perspective that’s a little different than most bloggers out there. So I’m trying to represent myself and my experiences because I think there is as much of a need for people to exhibit real life as there is for representing lifestyle.
I have been known to refer to myself as a blogging dinosaur. And I am. Less than 20% of all bloggers are between the ages of 36 and 50. I’m clearly in the minority. My hope is that, once dusted off a bit, these old bones will reveal a meaningful construct for women, moms, nonprofit observers, and bon mot consorts. In other words, I have Tyrannosaurus Rex-sized ambitions and plan to stretch these tiny arms as far as I can.
I am sincerely grateful for your interest in the blog. If you like what you read, I hope you’ll follow and subscribe to keep up with the latest prehistoric news! Meanwhile I’ll keep the travel tips, mom hacks, and nonprofit sector observations coming until the big meteor hits**.
** The leading theory explaining the extinction of all non-avian dinosaurs is known as the Alvarez Hypothesis. It postulates that a giant meteor hit the Earth about 66 million years ago, perilously altering the atmospheric climate and wiping out the population of terrestrial reptiles. You can read more about it here.
Sharing the front seat with your kids means more than simply yielding your traveling storage space – it’s a metaphor for growth and maturity.
I’m wrapping up this Tales from the 5th Grade series with some thoughts on sharing the front seat. From that dreaded rear-facing carrier to resisting the booster seat, every phase signals a child’s growth, maturity, and relative independence.
My 5th grader is clamoring to ride in the front seat of my car. As easy as it would be to allow him to move up front, I’m resisting. I’m resisting for a number of reasons. First, the great State of Texas recommends keeping children safely seated in the back until age 13. Even at average height and weight for his age, my son has only recently started riding without a booster (but don’t mention it his friends…). I always tell the kids that keeping them safe is our number one priority as parents, and I’m standing strong with this reasoning in the front seat debate. I know that my vehicle is equipped with the appropriate features to secure my little man, but I still get nervous about lazy seat belt use and air bag malfunction.
Second, the move to the front seat means I give up my personal space. And I don’t just mean breathing room. It’s the place I always put my purse and the other sundries I collect throughout the day (library books, water bottles, yoga mat… you know the drill). I often joke that my car is my office, and I’m not selling that prime real estate cheaply. Co-pilot training may be necessary. At a minimum, he’ll need to learn to juggle the dinner take-out bags with a wet umbrella under his feet. It could take months to devise the proper training protocols; meantime the 5th grader will need to stay comfortably in the back seat with his sister and all that extra floor space.
The thing is that moving to the front seat is more than just moving to the front seat; it’s a metaphor for larger life transitions. It represents acknowledgement that my 5th grader is big enough to sit up front – in his life and in the car. It’s giving him permission to be within arm’s reach of the radio controls. It’s surrendering my personal-space passenger seat to this sweet man-boy (and resisting the urge to throw my arm in front of him when I slam on the brakes). He’s going to middle school next year. Middle school! I feel like it was just yesterday I buckled him into a five-point harness and glanced the crazy infant mirror more often than I checked the rear-view. Now I have to consider him sitting next to me in the front seat, navigating his life’s roadmap while riding side-by-side.
Welcome to Being Bon Mot! I’m very excited to begin this web logging journey, and I’m so grateful that you’ve taken the time to visit. Regardless of how you came upon this blog, you’re probably wondering about the genesis of the bon mot (pronounced “bahn mo”) part of Being Bon Mot. In this post, we’ll explore my blog naming journey and seek to justify its relative obscurity.
Before dipping my toe into this icy lifestyle blogging water, I did a lot of research. A lot of research – I even read some real, tactile, non-digital books. I scoured Pinterest and other blog sites for tips, tricks, and pitfalls (I’ve listed some of my favorites at the end of this post.). All of these sites were unanimous on one thing – your blog name matters. Sure, lots of other things matter almost as much, but your identity is forever. “Don’t be too specific,” they say. “Don’t be too obscure,” they warned. “Your URL is key,” they insisted. So how did I end up at Being Bon Mot?
Truth be told, most all of the good blog and web addresses are taken (or at least the most obvious ones I dreamed up). It is 2018 after all. I’m not the proverbial canary in the blogging coal mine here. Many have flown fearlessly into these dark and treacherous conditions before me and swiped all of the clever monikers in their tiny beaks. They’re certainly well-deserved after helping pave the way for the likes of me. While the blog-naming voyage was much less suffocating, the challenge did seem perilous at times – conjure a brand, business, and blog name fit to survive uncertain conditions.
Bon Mot is clearly a French term. Quite literally it translates to “right or good word.” But let’s get one thing clear right now – I don’t speak French. Not even a little bit. I can’t even ask where the bathroom is in Paris or how to get to the train station in Lyon. The longest French phrase I know comes from “Lady Marmalade” and shouldn’t be uttered in mixed company. And I’m not a Francophile. Don’t get me wrong, I have absolutely nothing against French people, French speakers, or France writ large, but my enthusiasm for all things French is passive at best.
So, what about Being Bon Mot? Why start this journey in the taxonomy of relative obscurity? The answer lies somewhere between my idiosyncratic interests and intellectual pursuits. So, what do Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, Bill Bryson, and the Cheshire Cat have in common? They’re all bon mot. As a matter of fact, most of my favorite historical figures, authors, and even on-screen characters are often described as being bon mot. My near-fangirl interest in Ben Franklin first exposed me to the term as he’s quintesentially bon mot. And while I wouldn’t dare compare my work ethic to that of Hamilton, my turn of phrase to Bill Bryson, or my cleverness to the Cheshire Cat, that’s what I aspire to. That’s what this blog seeks to accomplish – to explore clever observations about my adventures (nay mis-adventures) in travel, parenting, teaching, volunteering, and life in general. Being Bon Mot is meeting our most amazing experiences and unexpected challenges with an intelligent retort and witty riposte. Or as Mr. Franklin quipped more aptly: “Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.”
I hope you’ll find what you’re looking for here, and if you don’t, please email me or comment with questions and post ideas.
