Hey, How Are Ya? It’s Good To Be Back.

Hey, How Are Ya? It’s Good To Be Back.

Over the past year and a half, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve opened up a fresh blog post, intending to write on one subject or another. The flashing line of the cursor instructing where to start, pulsing on a blank screen, seemed to both invite and mock me. Sometimes, it’s hard to know where to begin when so much time has gone by. Even for someone who loves to write. It’s like the overflow of information and ideas get stuck in the funnel. So, you politely put those thoughts onto a piece of paper, a to-do list for another day, and move along.

Or, at least that’s what I’ve done.

Having a baby. Postpartum healing. Three young children. The pandemic. No child care. Homeschooling and hybrid learning. Dodging COVID and the mental exhaustion that even mundane tasks like going to the grocery store now involves. It’s all thrown me through a loop. The energy it took to simply be present and juggle the thousand nuances and situations at home took every ounce of brain power I had. So, I faced lots of unanswered emails, a lack of motivation, ideas started and then abruptly stopped, and occasionally some guilt for all that I wasn’t doing or being in my days.

Energy isn’t infinite. Like a car low on gas, it depletes. You can’t drive around happily with the windows down if the fuel tank reads “Empty.”

Some call it burnout, and perhaps there’s an element of that there, but I look at it a bit differently. It’s all a choice. We choose where our hours are spent. Where our energy goes. That knowledge has led me to perhaps the biggest personal revelation of all. I am ambitious. I have lots of big ideas and thoughts. And I love to create and share. But at the end of the day, all of that will take a back seat to my family and their needs. So it’s been sitting there for a while now, emerging where and how it can, largely an observer.

And that’s okay. I am at peace with needing to pause elements of my business and career for my family. It wasn’t how I thought things would play out, but it’s what circumstances needed me to do during this time and for the good of our whole. After all, the biggest and most important thing I’ll ever create in life is my family. Taking a step back was necessary for our family and circumstances. There are only so many hours in the day, and mine needed to be devoted to them.

I’m fortunate to be at a point recently where it feels like a renewed start.

In September, Beau started 18-month preschool multiple days a week. Grace and Josephine’s schools have been surprisingly normal (knock on wood!) so far with no instances of COVID exposure, and no virtual or hybrid learning. In what I now view as a luxury, I find myself with more time to work during the week. Our balance seems to be somewhat restored, at least, as much as it can given that we’re still in a pandemic.

In the past month, I’ve completed 4 freelance writing projects that I’m really proud of. I took on a few paid partnerships for Instagram. I’ve got a huge list of blog topics I can’t wait to dive into. I’m really close to finishing the book outline I’ve been working on in the background for the past year. Today I opened up this blog post, and instead of starting numbly at the blinking cursor, I started to write.

Hindsight is 20/20. In January, I was hopeful for the reset button that I thought 2021 would be. It’s now the last quarter of the year, and as it turns out,it’s all been a lot of the same. Anxiety-inducing world events, lots of juggling, a bit of confusion, and what seems like a constant onslaught of no-win situations. The optimist in me thinks perhaps 2022 is our year. It also says that in a lot of ways things have improved significantly since the beginning of all this. But the realist in me sees that, perhaps what I’ve leaned on as excuses to not move forward, need to instead become motivation to start.

All this is to say…Hey! How are ya? It’s good to be back.

I’m not sorry for my hiatus, and I know I don’t owe anyone an explanation. But I wanted to provide one, because many of us have been friends for a long time and I believe you deserve a peek inside. I know no one has been waiting with baited breath for a post on this little ‘ol blog, but if you’ve checked in now and again, I want to say thanks for sticking with me.

I wish I could hug each and every one of you and tell you to your face, “You’re doing a great job.” I wish I could stare into your eyes, with the type of tears that can only come from truly understanding in mine, and tell you that the physical and mental load we as women have taken on in the past few years has been incredible. That however you’re managing it is okay. That I empathize with your struggles (because though varied, we all have them), and in the end we’ll be stronger for it. I really do believe that.

The road has had some curves, and as I get back into my car’s driver’s seat, I’m doing it with gratitude for it all. For the past year and a half, which has been filled with incredible quality time spent with the people who mean the most to me. For my newfound space to create. I’ll never look at it the same way again. I’m also doing it with the knowledge that as I prioritize the good of the whole, that consideration set also has to include me. No one can drive on “Empty.”

I’m looking forward to rolling those windows down, and hitting the road again. From my view it looks open, and it’s mine (all of ours!) for the taking.

Thanks for joining along on the ride.