Still Busy, But Still Here

Three times a week, I go running. This hour in the chilly afternoons is rapidly becoming the only time I have to myself. Which isn't even accurate, since I run with Duck in the jogging stroller. But since Duck loves this, and spends the miles cooing to himself and then napping, it is uninterrupted mental time for me.

I use this time to recenter myself. Think about how things are going at home, at work, with my friends, with my family.  I think about weak areas and develop solutions.

I compose blog posts. Things I want to say. Posts about things I've learned while running, things I've learned in 11 years of parenting, about the crazy squirrels in my backyard.

This weekend, as my feet started moving and my mind starting writing, I suddenly realized how few of these mental blog posts were actually making it from my brain to the screen. And by few, I mean none. I couldn't remember the last time I had written, actually written. Not just updated about the fun activities we were doing as a family or how fast Duck was growing, but keyed out a heart felt post.

I had a small anxiety attack.  Was my blog dead?

I hadn't written about my second 5K, I hadn't written about Halloween, I hadn't written about my job, or Hubster's ongoing adventures in dental school.  I hadn't written about anything really. Had I let my blog that I had loved and nurtured for years, had I let it die?

Blogging has rapidly been changing. There are new ways to follow blogs, new ways to read blogs, new ways to stay connected and new ways to comment. I understand none of them. I've seen my traffic and my comments dwindle just as rapidly as my postings (which is to be expected.)  As this blog is not a source of income and purely for my own enjoyment (and hopefully a little for yours), I haven't invested heavily in keeping up with new technologies and new platforms and new formats. This is pretty much the same place it was when I typed out my first awkward post 5 years ago.

When I graduated residency, I thought I would have oodles of time, mountains of time, more time than I knew what to do with. After all, I would be working 4 days a week, taking no call, working no weekends.  I was going to organize my house! Craft! Read! Blog!

Instead, life has a way of filling every moment, seeping into every new minute it can get, like tide waters cresting a river bank. There was no extra time.

All that extra time I thought I would have became filled with meals and homework and running and story time with Duck and laundry and grocery shopping and vacuuming and parent teacher conferences and the generalized attempts at keeping my head above water while trying to enjoy the ride.

Work has kept me busier than I expected. Covering all the things that Hubster used to do so that he can focus on dental school has kept me busier than I expected. Three kids keep me busier than even I could have imagined.

In reality, this is just a long winded way to reassure myself that this blog isn't dead. I may have only posted once or twice a month for the last year, but that doesn't I still don't have things to say. I may not say them as frequently or to as many people. But it was never about that. I wrote for a year before getting my first follower, and at no point during that time was I discouraged because of the lack of an audience. I'm going to continue to write for the same reason I started. To empty my brain. To capture the memories. To tell a story.

To enjoy the ride.