To What Aim We Grow...

I still exist.

I am alive.

And I am staging a comeback to the blogging world.

(Thanks to some of you, I can now actually say I am "Backed by popular demand" Thank you, you are a boost to my self esteem )

But the rules have changed a bit perhaps?

Where to begin?

I really needed a break. 

As a blogger, sometimes it begins to feel like there are two different lives you are living. There's the blog world which is full of recipes, stories, crafts, creativity, inspiration, insight and hilarity (right?)

And then there's the real world which is full of temper tantrums, messy houses, piles of laundry, headaches, soul-aches, hissy fits, uncooked dinner, cheeze whiz, cold coffee cups and pms. 

Can I get an amen?

There's the world where everyone get's to hear about all the fabulous things you've been up to and the compliments are nice (believe me... I LOVE them....maybe a little too much)

And then there's the world where you have real relationships and people have to work hard to get together and keep it together. There's struggle and irritation and ignorance and hurt feelings and the messy work of forgiveness and personal growth. 

Sometimes these two world collide....and when that happens.... they don't get along very well. 

Where those two world converge there is a fork in the road and a decision has to be made. 

To be an authentic person in the real world, must I give up the pretenses of the blog world that has inadvertently been created ( no matter how well intentioned) or for the sake of being an authentic writer, must I give up my real world priorities in order to throw myself upon my craft?

In the face of all that there's miscommunication, an awful lot of self reflection, prioritizing and serious time crunch (because really my days often feel like they fly by in about 5 minutes).

All these questions equaled.... burn out from the blog world. 

I....really....needed... a .... break. 

And I needed to reevaluate the whole machinery of the world I had created with my writing. 

Now, don't get me wrong... it's a genuine world, I am nothing, if not sincere in the things I write here. It's just a lot of editing.... a lot. Because my brain often feels like a full on 3 ring circus and I had to streamline that into something coherent, non-flippant, and hopefully entertaining all in the span of time it takes for my children to lie in their beds for naptime with their eyes wide open kicking the walls before they decide they are giving up on sleep happening for them that afternoon. 

It got a little tiresome to be honest. 

Of course the computer issues I continue to have don't help... I think I may give up on adding more than one photo per post max if I can too, cause.... well.... that's another post altogether. 

I needed the time to figure out where all of this is going. 

I needed to be honest with myself about where my motivations were coming from, what I was sacrificing and how much I had become dependent on the outside affirmation of strangers for the things I wanted to be intrinsically motivated to do for myself and my family. 

I needed to evaluate how I was presenting and representing my true self. My principles, my beliefs, my faith and on a lesser plane my opinions and ideas.

I needed to reevaluate my family's need for privacy... my own need for privacy and my maturing need to learn to keep my mouth shut at different times too.

I'm a big mouthed person who kind of blabs and blabs and blabs and doesn't always know when to quit and I think I got to a point where I was kind of sick of my own chatter. 

I just suddenly said "when"...and shut the computer off. 

Shut it down and put it in the basement. 

It's been almost a month... and boy oh boy have I been a busier, happier, free-er, girl because of it.

That's why I say that I think the rules have changed a bit for me. 

It's not a bad thing. 

I'd always said this blog was supposed to be a filter for personal growth, a journal, somewhere to chronicle my journey as an individual and if anything my last month of introspective hiatus has proved that the blog is working... it forced me into a place of confrontation with myself that I otherwise may not have had. 

Rules need to change because the writers need to change too...

So, all of this is to say that I likely won't be here to write every day as I was before. 

In fact, I definitely won't be.

I likely will write about a lot of OTHER things than what I have been writing about. 

Not that I WON'T write about sewing projects or things I'm crocheting...just don't EXPECT it...cause as excited as I am to DO the projects... I find WRITING about them.... kind of boring to be perfectly honest.

that goes for recipes too. 

I love cooking and eating.... I will never be a food writer....this I have discovered. 

On a side note, I'm not that good at taking photographs... especially in poor lighting and especially not of the step-by-step processes of craft or kitchen projects... so I'm just not going to take them anymore. If you see something that I've posted and your curious how I did it.... just email me and I'll fill you in. I likely won't do any more tutorial... I found they made my eye twitch. I literally had to schedule them on my calendar to get myself to do them and then I disliked every second of it. I also discovered this last month, that not needing to take pictures at every juncture of a project I was working on, significantly increased my enjoyment of the project. 

Also, the stories you will hear here are likely to be slightly outdated at times. One of the biggest difficulties as a blogger is where the world of blog anecdotes meets the world of real relationships and I go to share a laugh with a friend over something in my week and they say, "Oh, I already knew that... I read it on your blog."

... oh.....right.....

So, for those of you who know me... you might get a little repeat if you are reading a story here and you have already given the story a live audience at some point...you can all just keep me more honest in not embellishing the details right?

Okay, well that's it for now. 

I do have lots of "After" pictures to show you of a lot of the amazing things I have been up to the past month...but really one of my biggest accomplishments has been the regularity with which laundry has been washed and put away and my toilet bowls have never been less scary....my daughter can find everything in the craft cupboard, my son has not run out diapers and my husband has not had to make his daily sandwiches on freezer-burned hotdog buns found in a pinch...

these are good things and these days they are my priorities.

But, gosh I have missed this world too, so  somewhere along the line these two world will have to form a compromise.... I think I can manage it. 

For if not, then to what aim do we grow?