Nope, the blog isn’t dead. It’s just been taking a really, really, REALLY long nap.
The easy thing to do would say, “I’ve been busy.” It’s true for me, as it is for all of us.
The underlying truth is that I was busy when I was writing routinely- and may have been even more busy then, if I’m completely honest. While I’m in this moment of honesty, there are few things I detest more than people telling you how busy they are. Again, we’re all busy.
Factually speaking I’ve made other choices with my time for the last several months. For those who haven’t done it, moving as an adult can be exhilirating and a really good life choice and (by the way) require huge amounts of cognitive bandwidth and energy. I had to spend a few months consciously thinking about where the grocery store is, or which turns I take to get to work, or how long it takes to get anywhere. It’s been amazing for my brain plasticity to do this.
And learning to work in a new place for the first time in a really long time- even if it’s a great place (and it is) it’s still all new. I spent the first three months at work reveling in those days when I would walk around the building and actually see a familiar face. That’s a huge change from 20 years of social capital and not being able to walk down a hallway without seeing someone you know, even in the middle of the night. Not good or bad necessarily, just different, and what is required to learn to navigate a new place and new system is not inconsequential. It’s decreasing all of the time, but it’s still a real “thing.”
Of course there’s also the whole piece of moving as an adult and having to rebuild those social networks away from work since I refuse to maintain a unidimensional identity as a surgeon. For those who missed the memo, I am actually an introvert and socializing requires moderate amounts of energy for me until I’m completely comfortable with someone. Making new friends, finding new people to do things with is work- worthwhile work, but work nonetheless. Running has definitely been the facilitator for several new friendships, and I am so grateful for that.
I also had some health “stuff” this summer that really impacted my energy levels and my ability to sit here and type. It’s nothing life-threatening and it’s slowly and surely improving; I’ll just say if I never see poison sumac again it will be too soon.
Why the rambling story? To make the point that I could have kept writing this summer and it probably would have been okay. Instead, I made other choices to focus on learning how to be in my new life here in Ohio and to manage my energy when I felt pretty crummy for a while. Everything we do in life is a choice, not just to do that thing we choose but also a choice to not do something else. Hopefully both of those are deliberate and intentional since we really are saying no (whether we mean to or not) when we say yes.
I’ve been saying no to the blog, and that’s okay. I also have realized in the last couple of weeks with the change in the season that I’m craving more reading, more writing, and more creating. It’s time to say yes again.