Where I’ve Been and Where I’m Going

Hello!

Happy fall!  Happy holidays!  Happy New Year!

It has been over three months (!) since my last post, unless you count my Philofaxy guest post, in which case it’s been over two months.  Either way, this is the longest I have ever gone without blogging.  I have both missed it and…not.

I have missed the physical and creative aspects of writing, and I’ve missed the interaction with my readers and their comments.  However, I did not miss the stress I often put on myself to get a post published.  Typically, I average a post a week, and since the summer, I have not been able to do even that much.  I decided back then that I wasn’t going to stress over getting a post out just for the sake of doing it.  My mind was tired of forcing a post on a topic that I didn’t have much heart for just to publish something.  See, since I moved into a compact binder (specifically my two VDS binders, one and two), and having other supplemental binders and notebooks, I have been perfectly happy.  “Planner peace,” as it is referred to, doesn’t allow for much fodder for writing about planners, which I assume is what a majority of my readers are here for, though who knows—maybe I’m wrong about that.  I’m happy with my system, and because of that, it rarely changes.  I haven’t had a topic burning in my brain that I needed to write about.

It is more than that, however.  Whether or not I had topics ideas, I simply haven’t had the time.  The fall was busy with fall activities: nieces’ soccer games, trips, anniversaries, birthdays, weddings, and yes, even a funeral.  Then came the holidays.  Between work and activities, it seemed as if every weekend was taken up with something.  Even if it was only one day that was spoken for, everything else had to get done on the other day.  It’s hard to fit a week’s worth of tasks and chores into one day, much less only the two or three hours I sometimes had for them.  Needless to say, blogging fell by the wayside, as it wasn’t a high-priority item, especially with a lack of exciting topics in mind.  I did feel bad about not getting to it, and more often than not, it would get rescheduled from one day to another, then rescheduled again.  On and on and on.  But I had to remind myself that it just wasn’t worth stressing over.  Readers would still be here when I finally got back to it, though I did notice I lost a few.  Oh well.  I can’t control it.

Anyway, now that the holidays are over, I do have some time to devote to blogging again.

But because of all the points mentioned above, I have been really thinking about time.  Each year, time seems to go faster and faster with no way of slowing it down.  I can’t believe we’re already in 2016.  Nor can I believe how quickly 2015 flew by.  So not only have I been thinking about time in a general sense, I’ve also been thinking about how I spend my time.  I have numerous tasks and projects written down that I would love to get to.  But the reality is, there just isn’t enough time for them all.  Slowly, I’ve come to the realization that I need to let go of most of them.  They aren’t urgent, after all.  They’re not even important.  They’re just things that I would like to do, that I’ve created for myself to do.  But I’ve had to decide on whether or not there is even a point to them. 

I admit—I am my own worst enemy when it comes to time.  I create more tasks for myself than are necessary, put too much importance on getting them done, then get stressed out when I don’t get to them.  So I’m learning to let go of unnecessary things.  I still have these projects and tasks written down—some day I may get to them, or I may never get to them.  But at least I won’t forget that at one time they were important enough for me to think about it and write them down.  Time will only tell what will become of them.

My resolutions for 2016 are pretty much the same as they were for 2015, mainly because I didn’t achieve them in 2015, not in a consistent manner, anyway.  There is one addition though, and that is to pay more attention to how I spend my time—where am I spending a majority of my time and with whom?  Most importantly, of the things I spend time doing, how many of them are important; how many of them to I truly love doing?  I want to reassess my activities, tasks, and time.  Perhaps it’s just a question of managing my time more efficiently.

One of my biggest time wasters is social media—Facebook, Instagram, blog reading, and yes, perhaps even blog writing.  Where does this blog fit in my list of important tasks?  I’m not sure.  The reasons for this are simple: in my experience, most people prefer videos these days; a majority of people are looking for decorating posts; people tend to read blogs that update daily; and people gravitate towards bloggers who are heavily involved with social media.  I realize that these are general statements and that there are exceptions.  In any event, I cannot do any of these.  Therefore, I question whether or not it’s even worth it for me to continue.

This blog started as a hobby, one that I have grown to love and enjoyed every moment of.  I do not make money from it.  I have a full-time job and therefore cannot put forth the effort it would take to grow this blog into a moneymaking brand or even a brand that many people know.  I have often wondered if it could even be done, based on what I have to offer.  But in the end, it doesn’t matter.  I can’t devote the time to find out.  Not right now anyway.

During my time away from the blog, I decided that when the time came to return to writing I would only write when I had something to say.  I decided not to stress about it.  I decided to see where the chips may fall where the blog is concerned because, let’s face it, keeping up a blog is a lot of work, especially when we’re in the digital age of instant gratification and content is constantly fighting other content for attention.  I can barely keep up with the current technology I’m familiar with, let alone any new technology that comes along.  And in my quest for more time and deciding what is worthy of my time, social media is falling by the wayside for me.  I’m trying to focus on more personal interactions and communication.

Of course, since coming to the above conclusions, I have had several blog topics pop into my head.  So we will see how it all plays out.  I hope to continue with writing once a week but I am not going to force the issue.  That is the only way I know to figure out what I want to do with this space.  Hopefully I will get to post about some of the topic ideas I’ve come up with recently.

In the meantime, I’m still active within the Philofaxy community, even if it’s in smaller chunks at a time.

Thanks for reading and I wish you all the best in the New Year and the days to come!