Thoughts

Adapting

19

When things get hectic, blogging is the first thing that goes for me. It always has. I’ve tried to keep up during hard times over the years, the biggest adaptation happening when Forest was born to some themed posts to keep me going. And it works, usually.

I certainly don’t want to quit writing here. When you’ve been putting your writing online in some form since 2002 it is hard to give it up because you’ve turned into one of those hardcore old-style bloggers and, well, I don’t want to stop blogging yet. But….writing and reading blogs has been more time consuming this last year. And I need to adapt it into something that fits me for now. So, while I will probably still take a bazillion photos I just won’t be writing up every little trip for a while. If I have problems keeping up and reading blogs, surely my readers have the same with my writing.

I find myself wanting to read more, of the book kind, and I have been reading voraciously this year so far. I’ve had a lull over the last few weeks, the pull of the phone outweighing the piles of paper and digital pages that are compiling. I also have a stack of magazines from the last year or so I want to read but I’ve found my focus is not long enough to digest it all. Another item I need to work on.

But most of all, I’ve felt the need to be creating elsewhere than writing here to share. I’ve been trying to sketch in my sketchbook and do some small watercolors in another watercolor journal. As much as I want to even focus on some Actual Paintings, I also find myself lacking the discipline and time to devote to that at the moment. So, smaller tidbits of art where I can. I’m also trying to encourage Forest to join in and I’ve been trying to have art time one or two evenings a week. A couple of years ago, I found a stack of 6×6 paper books at the Dollar Spot at Target. He created through those quickly and I bought some similar books at Michaels online last summer during the height of quarantine. And he goes through those and creates little art books and I see that in a short time he will be also writing stories in them. The evolution of his reading abilities in the last few months has taken off and while reading and sounding words out is different than actually putting them down on paper (it’s harder, more help is requested!), I know that the ease and ability to do it himself is just around the corner.

And that’s where we’re at right now, a transition to leaving kindergarten and into first grade soon. A transition from staying away from folks to seeing folks and venturing out more. Spring to summer. Quiet to busy. And it’s a lot.

I can’t guarantee how this blog will look and I am not going to state that I’m committing to writing once a week or anything like that because putting some kind of confined space around what I put here is a guarantee for me to rebel and not do it.

In the meantime, I’ll be around. Probably puttering in the garden or with a nose in a book, and sometimes putting down words and photos here.

3 Comments

  • shoreacres

    That’s one reason I’ve limited both the number of blogs I follow and social media involvement. Even on Twitter, the only place I still check, I’ve limited myself primarily to weather-related sites. Of course, I’m the weird one who added a blog rather than reducing my time on one, but if I wanted to write only for myself, I’d keep a journal, and if I took photos only for myself — well, what’s the point in that?

    Whatever direction you take needs to please you. We’re just along for the ride.

  • Rosemarie

    I especially liked the part about if you say you’ll do it once a week, then you’ll rebel against it. I understand the feeling.

    I am trying to develop some video editing skills. Needed to go beyond just creating a song, and felt called to make videos for songs. Slow going, but fun to try a complementary creative outlet.

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