It's been a long time (long time)
I shouldn't of left you (left you)
Without a dope beat to step to (step to, step to, step to...)
Or in my case, a dope blog, amirite? By the way, you’re most welcome for the Earworm o’ the Day.
For real though. I haven’t blogged since November and I have no excuses. Excuses are flimsy. But reasons, reasons are solid. Reasons sounds like I’ve actually thought it through and am not trying to make myself feel better about slacking off. So no, I don’t have any excuses for not blogging for three months. But I do have reasons. And some of them are pretty good.
First, a very disrespectful cyst has been residing rent-free on my left ovary, causing so much pain I can barely walk at times, let alone think coherently enough to write much of anything blog-worthy. I composed my last post while under the influence of pain medication. I barely remember writing it.
Since I was bedridden for most of November, I took on an editing project as a favor for a friend. It was something I was easily able to do from bed and it didn’t require much creative energy. It wasn’t blogging. It wasn’t even writing. But at least it was writing adjacent.
For Thanksgiving my husband and I visited friends in the California wine country. We were back in Houston for only a few weeks before we were off again, this time to spend the Christmas and New Year holidays in Boston, London, and Paris. I had hoped to blog during my trips, and even took notes for several post ideas. But my motivation never quite caught up with my desire. It was way too easy to convince myself I had no time to work on the blog, what with all the shopping and sightseeing and drinking and eating. It’s no wonder I’ll probably never start that travel blog.
I also have to admit, I was a touch apathetic about blogging anyway. The end of 2016 was just so...much. I needed a physical and a mental break. I promised myself I would attack my blogging goals with vigor anew when I got home.
Unfortunately, by the time we returned from the UK in early January, I had developed acute bronchitis. And not to be outshined by my lungs, my ovary said, “Don’t forget about me, ma’am!” and the damn cyst (which I’d hoped had dissolved) was back with so much vengeance you would think I’d said something bad about its mother. For the first few weeks of what should have been my vigorously productive new year, all I could do was read, sleep, binge TV shows, pop pills, and repeat.
Thankfully, I felt better later in the month — just in time to attend the Houston Women’s March with some friends, one of whom works for the Houston Public Library System. With her access, we went to the top floor of the downtown library after the march, where we soaked up the free A/C and surveyed the rally below. As we were leaving, we passed by a cavernous storage room, its numerous cases filled with books. I paused in the doorway to inhale their beloved, intoxicating scent and was reminded for the first time in three months not of the reasons I wasn’t blogging, but of the reasons I even blog at all.
I blog not only because I enjoy it, but because I am a writer. As a writer, I think in written words. I can’t get through a day without dozens of writing ideas popping into my head; the beginnings of essays or snatches of dialogue for short stories are always tumbling around up there. Whether or not I act on them doesn’t matter. I can’t stop them forming, unbidden and distracting.
Every day, so many little reasons to write. Something interesting happens and my immediate thought is: How do I write about this? Like my bones or musculature or blood, writing is just a part of me. It’s like an appendage, there even when I’m not using it. It’s why I feel guilty when I’ve been on hiatus from this blog, especially a hiatus as long as three months. It’s why I don’t have any excuses for not blogging. A few reasons, but no excuses.
As is always the case when I take too long of a break from something I know I should be doing (blogging, writing, exercising, staying on a budget), I’ve indulged in a goodly amount of mental self-flagellation. Now I’m swallowing the guilt and getting back to it. I’ve spent the last few weeks journaling ideas. My mind is awhirl with all the things I have to share and the stories I want to tell through my blog. I just have to keep reminding myself of the reason I blog, not all the reasons I haven’t been.
Stay tuned.
