{"id":15000,"date":"2019-11-10T22:05:03","date_gmt":"2019-11-11T06:05:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/?p=15000"},"modified":"2019-11-10T22:05:03","modified_gmt":"2019-11-11T06:05:03","slug":"i-didnt-blog-in-october","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/2019\/11\/i-didnt-blog-in-october\/","title":{"rendered":"I didn’t blog in October"},"content":{"rendered":"

On June 4th, 2002 I wrote my first blog entry<\/a>. It was on a platform long past its prime, though I imported it all to this self-hosted blog years ago. In a hilarious stroke of irony, my first blog post is entirely about how I probably won’t keep blogging, and here I sit over 17 years later as one of the few who still maintains a personal blog, let alone one that is in the format of a public diary.<\/p>\n

As my life has changed over the years, the quality of my writing improved and I’ve become much more selective about what I write. It was only my love for history that kept me from deleting my oldest posts that show a naive 20 year old blabbering into the nothingness that was an anonymous internet pre-social media. I aired opinions about all sorts of things and wrote about random thoughts that came into my head, sometimes multiple times a day. My life was hella boring, but I managed to write. And keep writing.<\/p>\n

In recent years, my blog has turned into a highlights reel. Instead of writing every day, my average has been closer to once a week. I write about conferences, trips, and brain dumps of the latest things going on with my life. I treasure my blog for capturing everything that I love about my life. I try to be honest, but I definitely have shifted to the positive and thoughtful with much of what I write now.<\/p>\n

Through my difficult pregnancy and finally welcoming Adam into our lives, I didn’t miss a beat. My average this year dropped to writing every other week, but my blog is important to me<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I have written in my blog at least once every month since it started in June 2002.<\/p>\n

Until last month.<\/p>\n

I wrote no personal blog posts in October 2019.<\/p>\n

At the end of October, while I was at LISA19, I had a moment of reflection about how I “haven’t blogged recently” but the conference was a whirlwind and I didn’t make time to pause. Perhaps if I had realized that the month would stand out like this I would have gone to bed a bit later one night during the conference just to knock out a quick entry about our trip back east at the end of September (a post that is still pending). But no, I enjoyed those child-free nights at the conference by sleeping, and as November swept me up in her cool clutches, I finally thought to skim through my archives and confirm what I suspected: I had never missed a whole month before.<\/p>\n

So, why is this?<\/p>\n

The obvious answer is the correct one: I had a child.<\/p>\n

It’s more complicated than that though, since I did manage to keep up with my blog in those early months. Looking back since I last blogged on September 19th, I realized that I got sick enough to leave me bedridden for at least a day twice (stomach bug in early October, then a nasty cold last week). Being sick and recovering takes at least a week and a half, during which I don’t push myself and I make sure I get plenty of rest. Pushing myself was essential to keeping up with my blog and all the other things I do in my life after I finish work, mothering, and household chores.<\/p>\n

I say “was” because I think I’ve reached another crossroads in my need to streamline my life. Before Adam joined our lives, I was accustom to the luxury of having large chunks of free time where I could “get in the zone” and accomplish a lot. I could let a “half hour free, here and there” go as not enough time to accomplish anything and crash on the couch to skim social media. I no longer have that luxury. That “half hour free, here and there” is often all I have<\/em> without “pushing myself” and cutting into my much-needed sleep. I need to learn to be productive in half hour chunks.<\/p>\n

So here goes. First is the realization. Now the commitment. I’m in! Now, I’m going to try a bit of time blocking to be very specific about what I want to do each day between end-of-day chores and dinner with MJ. With any luck, I’ll finally get that blog post about our visit back east at the end of September written soon.<\/p>\n

P.S. Down time is important. I currently do have a slim budget for reading and watching TV, and it tends to be while I’m pumping breast milk outside of work hours. Being relaxed while I pump is important to my success, so that’s about 40 minutes a day (80 minutes on weekends) where I let myself relax to watch a show or read the latest chapter in a book. Also, I also fully intend block time every evening, but give myself some leeway to skip one if I really do just want to crash on the couch and browse social media. Parenthood is exhausting. My job is exhausting. Sometimes I just don’t have it in me to do anything productive. That’s ok, and I know it’s ok.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On June 4th, 2002 I wrote my first blog entry. It was on a platform long past its prime, though I imported it all to this self-hosted blog years ago. In a hilarious stroke of irony, my first blog post is entirely about how I probably won’t keep blogging, and here I sit over 17 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflection"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15000"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15000\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15007,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15000\/revisions\/15007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}