dear blog.

dear blog,

i have neglected you. when we started out, i wrote every day. i was passionate about unloading my thoughts and sending them into the blogosphere. and then i started writing every other day. things were getting busier around here and i justified cutting back. html doesn't have feelings, afterall. but then, i only seldom wrote, when i had time. which, in the world of toddler hood, is practically non existent. so i drifted away. letting go of our little fling. it was fun while it lasted.

but then words jumbled around in my mind. sometimes, complete thoughts would actually form, which had become somewhat of a rarity. i wanted to write again, but it had been so long, i felt like i would have to explain and offer excuses. and that just seemed so trite. so i stayed away.

but now, i think, i am back. i can't promise that things will be the same as they were before, blog. now, my time on the computer is usually spent video chatting with joel, who is half a world away, and honestly, i don't think about you much then. every other moment of the day is spent on the phone with insurance companies and lawyers and realtors or chasing around the busiest toddler mankind has ever known. these sound like excuses maybe, still. but, blog? this is what happens when you are aan adult (and a real person). you have more important things. you find different things that make you happy. you grow up. you move on. you change and evolve.

for now, just be happy that i think of you often and i will be writing more. but don't get greedy, blog. it's not all about you anymore.

j.

i was a slave to social media

if you haven't noticed, i have taken an extended sabbatical from blogging recently. saying we've been busy would not really convey how things have been going. but words are kind of escaping me right now.

the truth is? i haven't been on the computer much over the past 3 weeks.

and i have LOVED it.

there are drawbacks, sure. i am way disconnected. my inbox is currently flooded with mostly junk tons of really important stuff. i'm behind on all the juicy celebrity gossip. my reader is too full to ever catch up on. and mostly, there has not been a steady influx of cuteness gracing the interwebs with my baby's perfectly shaped noggin.

the upside? during bella's naps this week, i've been catching up on glee. why didn't anyone enlighten me on it's awesomeness!?!?! we have played more. we have traveled a bunch (also mostly the reason i haven't been on). and i have reconnected with my family. which is what life is all about, no?

i didn't intend to go away. not at all. but after we went camping, life got really packed with stuff. we flew out to california for a friends wedding, we went to florida to get my mom and move her up here, we moved my mom in, and we have been preparing for a deployment. then we all got the voms. it wasn't the flu, but each one of us spent 24 hours puking our brains out. lovely, right? for bella, it started an hour after we left my moms house. and continued the entire length of our 8 hour drive (which is usually a 6 hour drive. but stopping every 2 hours to clean up a sick baby, and following the uhaul that was towing my moms car added quite a bit of time on to our trip).

i have to say that i didn't really miss social media that much. i missed facebook a little bit, but it was a very little bit. i didn't miss twitter at all. and my blog? i mostly felt guilty about not writing. but i didn't miss it entirely. i missed getting stuff out. i missed the outlet and the creativity it inspired. but i didn't miss feeling like i had to keep up and perform.

i have a friend who once staged a photo shoot with a group of friends to post on facebook. it was an experiment of sorts, where he reasoned that everything people do, they do so they can post it on facebook to make everyone else think they have this exciting fun life. so he got together with about 12 other people and they went to a park with mallets and pretended they were playing croquet. they took hilarious photos, all posed, to make it look like they were having a blast. after it was over, he mused that, even though it was initially farce, it ended up being a really fun day that they all laugh about. i think about this a lot when i post stuff. sometimes, i will see something cute or funny and literally think, "i should put that on facebook!". and part of me hates myself for that.

this isn't some kind of epiphany or resolution. i have learned some about myself and my dependence on social media, but i am not vowing to avoid it for an amount of time. i don't want to be a slave to anything. especially not something driven by an innate need for human interaction and attention. so i will just continue to post when i feel something is worthy of sharing, and i will read things that i feel are worthy of my time. but i definitely want to make my real human interaction a priority. it's so much more rewarding and gratifying anyway.