A Summer Blogging Decision

Welcome to my 1,318th published blog post! 

Photo courtesy of todaymade.com

Wow, that seems like a lot, doesn't it? I started blogging in September of 2008.  As I got into the groove, my goal was to blog every day. If you look at the stats on the right hand sidebar of this screen under the heading "Blog Archive", you will see that I have been successful at doing so for the past 2 years and only 10 posts short of 365 in 2009. Some of those blog posts were scheduled in advance but that took preparation, especially if I was going to be away for more than just a weekend. It has been good discipline for me, to write every day.

But lately I've been wondering if it is really necessary. What would happen if I didn't blog every day? Not so much from the standpoint of "would anyone notice?", as I know my faithful readers are out there (and I love you all, thank you for showing up regularly to see what I've got to say!) but more along the lines of, "would the world come to an end if I missed a day here and there?" No. "Would I personally feel bad about missing a day?" I don't think so, not any more. "Can I cut myself some slack and allow myself to skip a day here and there?"  Yes. 

The more I use my physical journal every day to record and capture the thoughts and images in my head means that some days, it feels like too much to have to write a blog post as well.  Whatever that urge was to blog every single day seems to be occasionally absent nowadays. Not to mention that on certain days, usually the ones where I have been overstimulated on the computer all day at work and my eyes are crossed and blurry as a result, it feels more like a chore than a choice and that's not a good thing.

At the moment, my inner voice is telling me I need a rest. Sometimes, you need to take a break from doing something to see if it is something you want to continue doing. That's what a vacation is for, to spend time away from your regular routine and explore new directions and places.

So for the next little while, I'll be giving myself permission to take a little blogging vacation from time to time. For now, it will just be a day here and there, to see how that goes. Like this weekend, being the first long weekend of summer for us Canadians, I'm off to the cottage for the next 2 or 3 days to "open up", which involves a lot of heavy duty cleaning to air everything out and clean up the dust and dirt that have collected over the past several months since October when we closed it down for the year. Since we don't have access to the Internet up there and since I haven't had time to schedule any posts for the next day or two, there might be a gap in communications.  I think we can handle it, don't you?  Just didn't want anyone to worry if there isn't a new post each day.

It may be that when I go to Italy, I won't even take my computer (gasp!).  I'm not sure about that yet, I'm still pondering that choice, it seems rather extreme but also enticing to go off the grid for two whole weeks.  We'll see.

In the short term, I'll just see how it goes to let go, just a little bit, every once in a while.  But please stay tuned!