Oh simple thing, where have you gone?

Sitting down to start this post, I have vowed to myself that I will not overthink it. I am sitting here after well over a year of leaving this space abandoned so, really, my expectations should be very low.  I am not about to hammer any profound words of wisdom into my keyboard. 

What I am wanting to do is to get back into the habit of writing on a consistent basis. So many things have change since I started this blog however many years ago (I went back and checked- my first post here was in 2008). I started this blog before I was married, before I became a mother, before I lost my father. I started this blog before COVID and the Trump presidency and before several mass shootings a year were a thing. 

I also started this blog before got my job as a Family Support Partner, before I performed in Listen to Your Mother, before I took part in Partners in Policymaking and LEND, and before I became  an educational advocate. This blog has been with me in tragedy and in growth and in miracles and despite that fact that I often say "I used to write," I am still a writer. 

Another thing that came after I started this blog were Podcasts, and I was recently listening to the We Can Do Hard Things podcast with Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach and Amanda Doyle. I have long been a fan of Glennon's blog and writing and find the podcast to be very honest and funny and real. A recent episode on writing and art discussed Glennon's need to use writing as an outlet for the things that she would never say out loud, but given light by writing. It started with Glennon getting up early, before her whole family, and writing. Just writing. Some of it served to act as a mechanism of communication to her family for the things she didn't want to talk about, but even more than that it was getting the thoughts and feelings out. Glennon spoke of how she would write and hit publish with no proofreading because the writing was cathartic, and she wanted to make it a habit. So, she wrote and wrote until it was. 

According to the Googles, it takes approximately 66 days to make something a habit and while there are sooooo many other goals I could work on via this theory (entering my work notes, doing laundry, eating well, exercising, tidying up, moisturizing, etc) I think this one will have the greatest effect on my well being. I enjoy writing, I don't really enjoy sharing my feelings but since no man is an island, this will be my mechanism.

I have gone down this path before of coming back to my blog after a long absence and promising myself that I will write. But too often I would sit down and feel that I had nothing to say so I would just get up without having written anything. I won't allow myself to that this time. This time, I will realize that there is always something to say when you aren't waiting to write a masterpiece. Instead, I will write for myself. 

And I'm going back to song lyrics in my titles because it makes me happy. 

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