Back Again

Hello readers.  I basically took a sabbatical from my blog for two and a half months, which was the longest time I have been away since starting this thing in January of 2012.  I think it was a much needed break.  I didn't intend to do it, and at some points while I was away I thought about never returning again.  At other times, I knew I would be back - it was just a matter of time.

Why did I stop blogging?  For a variety of reasons, some of which I really can't go into much detail here. The immediate source of it was a huge fight that I had with Michael when we were both exhausted after a trip back to the U.S. that was technically a vacation but in reality felt like an endurance test, and when we returned we both had no capacity for generosity or kindness toward each other.   That incident crystallized my frustration with keeping a blog and made me feel like a fraud.   I didn't feel like I could blog blithely about other matters without respecting the part of myself that was deeply hurt by this incident.  Not writing about it didn't feel honest to me, because it threw into sharp relief the aspects of my life that I am not writing about here.  But at the same time, I don't (and never did and likely never will) want my blog about every aspect of my life because that's just not the kind of person that I am.

In the run up to the end of 2018, the blog had started to feel like another chore; another constant on my to-do list of something that perpetually remained outstanding.  Even after I blogged, there would immediately be another incident or cute picture or trip that I felt obliged to record/keep/take note of/update for my next post.  I was also feeling, whether I realized it at times or not, crushing pressure to capture pictures and videos of Lola (which never worked because she would immediately stop playing or doing whatever cute thing to try to grab my phone) and to record her milestones and achievements, which I felt was always up to me.

I am also thinking more about Lola's right to privacy and how much I should be sharing in a public forum.  I thought about writing in saved drafts and not publishing them.  I thought about writing to a closed public requiring a username and password only given to friends and family.  Call me an exhibitionist (or maybe there is an evolutionary reason for this impulse to share) but writing into a vacuum does not interest me and writing to a circumscribed group of select people feels contrived.

So I decided to shut up and turn my attention to other things.  I started seeing a therapist.  I committed to attending more challenging yoga classes and accomplishing some tough poses.  I have started going to dinner once every month with a great group of girls.  I tried meditating for the first time and discovered to my surprise that I fall asleep so much more easily after a mere five minute session.  I am trying to be easier on myself and to let things go.  I am trying to relax and have more fun.  I thought it was a sign that both my therapist and new GP told me to "go have fun."  Do I come across as a very serious person?  I must.

While I find the practice of putting my thoughts on paper therapeutic and enjoyable, I think a lot of the pleasure that I derive from the blog stems from, especially as the years have gone by, being able to admire my oeuvre of work.  And I don't mean that in the sense that my work is good - I really mean that the longevity of this blog has far surpassed what I expected.  It takes perseverance to keep up a blog.  It is a labor of love but it is a lot of work.  Without a physical record manifesting the passage of my days, all the details get fuzzy or lost.  With pages upon pages of pictures and thoughts available from the past 7 years of my life searchable at the flick of a few fingertips... well, what a treasure.  A little voice in my head kept saying, it seems a shame not to continue.

I am nowhere near figuring out what I want or what I will do with the blog.  When I studied history in college, historiography intrigued me because it was the first time in my life that I pondered how history is shaped by its recordkeepers.  As a lifelong lover of fiction, it made me wonder what, then, is actually "true", and how does non-fiction differ from fiction, and how much can one rely on something purporting to be fact?  Since then, I have been very conscious of the narrator in any story.  But why should that be different for my own story?  I guess I am resurfacing here with the recognition that some record of most things is better than no record of any thing.  And I truly have missed writing.