How It Is
Winner of Friday's Mackinac Island drawing has been contacted. Melanie and Cara thank you for playing!
Taps microphone.
“Is this thing on? Helleww?”
WHERE have you guys been? I've been waiting around here ALL summer by myself.
Kidding.
I took an extended blog break obviously. I appreciate the emails and messages sent my way checking on me.
All is and was fine. I had a wonderful summer, and I hope you did as well.
I went to Panama, toured the rain forest, spent the day with an indigenous tribe who doesn't believe in underpants, took some day trips, swam, sunned, read, spent time with my family.
As mentioned before my break, I'm on Twitter and Facebook multiple times a day, every day.
I like those two venues. You should join me there.
Many of you have blogs and will relate when I say a blog post takes me about an hour to create. When I blog three times a week, that's three hours a week.
Twitter and FB take me seconds, and I feel like I say all I've got to say in more digestible bites.
It's said that to maintain traffic and get an impact, the minimum number of times you must blog is 3x a week or it's useless. I'm about to become useless.
I love my blog friends and family. You guys make me smile on a regular basis, and many of us have become genuine friends. Or at least the kind of friends who wave at each other as we pass one another in the social media hallways.
A couple years ago, God asked me to really make some changes. To simplify. To reprioritize. To let some things go. To clutch some things and people even tighter.
To spend more time with family and be in the moment.
To go on an outing and be present, versus watching it from behind a camera lens or with thoughts of a blog or a book.
To write when it made me happy. To not write when it didn't.
To write to a form that made me happy. To not write to a form that did not.
To change the things that I'd been griping about for years or quit my complaining.
To change my perspective of my abilities by changing by perspective of God's abilities.
To value time and happiness over money and goal, expectations, and check-lists.
To make some changes in my health.
To be kinder to myself and others.
To shut my mouth more when I normally do not. To open it more when I'm usually quiet.
To be aware of the little things.
To turn down some of the noise.
What I've learned is that the best days are ahead, I don't have to have the answers to take a step in a new direction, my butt hates sitting, too much free time makes me nuts, I'm desperate to make amends with the snow gods, and Say Yes to the Dress is a really good show.
This summer I left teaching and took a job in my district at a junior high as a librarian. I'm back to working full-time, I've returned to grad school for a third degree, and I picked up a paint brush and can of Benjamin Moore for the first time in two years.
None of that was in my play book.
Except the painting part.
I've had a lot of emails and messages asking when the next book will be out.
I'm not sure.
I'm just not in any rush.
We're all writing a story. With how we spend our seconds, minutes, hours, and days.
I want mine to be a good one.
And I'm wishing that for you as well.
See you next week.
“Does anybody ever realize life while they live it? Every, every minute?”
“The saints and the poets. They do some.”
—Our Town
