reasons not to blog

reasons not to blog post image

It’s been a month since you last wrote, and two months since you wrote a real post that was more than a link to writing you’ve done elsewhere. How to catch up? Do you need to catch up? What are the blogging rules?

It’s December, which makes you feel that you should comment on the season, and post pretty pictures of wreaths and trees. But you barely finished making the wreath last night, and you’ve been too busy to take photos of the tree when the light is right.

You haven’t been taking photos at all lately. Blog posts need photos.

You decided to manage a Destination Imagination team for your kid, like you did for your oldest exactly ten years ago. Because you remembered how it was such a good vehicle for creativity, and teamwork, and outside-the-box thinking, but you clearly forgot how damn much time was involved.

You resolved that in the months leading up to your 50th birthday that you would drop the extra pounds that have somehow adhered to you over the past ten years. So you try a specific diet, which you have never done in your life, which is difficult as a vegetarian, which requires eating beans by the bucketload, and which you are sticking with because it seems to be working. But you find yourself thinking about how your jeans are fitting, and how you will manage holiday parties with all their forbidden foods and cocktails, and what new thing you can do with beans instead of what you might blog about.

Your friends are also turning fifty this year. Which means that thrown into the night-after-night holiday celebrations are two 50th birthday parties. In one week.

Your daughter came home from college for almost a week at Thanksgiving, and it was wonderful and would have been such a good thing to write about, after posts like this one. But you enjoyed her instead of writing about it, and now enough weeks have passed that she’ll be back again in a few days. So you missed that blog post train.

You started to knit a hat for that girl, but you tried a tubular cast-on which you always mess up after you cast on all those darn stitches, and the two times you got it right your gauge was still loose, so you are starting again for the—seriously—seventh time.

You ordered Christmas cards early for once but they’re still sitting in a box waiting to be addressed, which pretty much cancels out your on-top-of-things-ness.

The satusma tree is fruiting a month early, so you add marmalade-making to the all the other seasonal craziness.

It’s more fun to search online for the perfect pair of boots that you’d like for Christmas–to go with all the other almost perfect pairs–than to write blog posts.

reasons to blog:

You miss your merry little band of readers, and you want to wish them a few weeks of glittery lights and laughter around tables.

Enjoy the season, sweet readers.

22 comments… add one
  • Kim Dec 16, 2014 @ 12:38

    Happy Holidays to you too! All the best for a wonderful holiday season.

    • patricia Dec 17, 2014 @ 7:47

      Thank you, Kim. And thank you for being a longtime reader!

  • Stacey Dec 16, 2014 @ 12:50

    Remember it is about the living not the recording, we share and record when the moment to write is right, not out of duty. I love hearing from you but living is what is key, you know the whole marrow sucking thing.

    Sending you happy holiday feelings from Colorado!

    • patricia Dec 17, 2014 @ 7:54

      You’ve got me pegged, Stacey. I’m dutiful to a fault, and have a hard time not feeling like I’m failing when I drop off my blog (and Twitter and Instagram.)

      But life has been good–there’s that! Happy holidays to you, too!

  • Jen S Dec 16, 2014 @ 14:07

    I’ve also been in a blogless season, but I’m very present in my day to day life 🙂

  • erin perry Dec 17, 2014 @ 12:21

    it’s been awhile since i blogged. i might start again, who knows? i love what you wrote today, as i grieve my mother’s passing in july and have thrown up my hands in surrender to this season more than once, as i try to do it all without her in our life, in new ways and old ways and with lists of things i just won’t get to. this year i am adopting a ‘let go of’ list in place of my ‘to do’ list. i think it will help me. xoxo

    • patricia Dec 17, 2014 @ 20:58

      Oh, Erin, your comment puts perspective on my own mindless, spinning busy-ness. How hard to have your first holidays without your mother! I wish you the best. Your “let go of list” sounds like such a wise idea–and something I will keep in mind myself. I hope that you find some peace and renewal in the season. xo right back.

      • erin perry Dec 18, 2014 @ 0:04

        no, not mindless at all … maybe more like, we are temper and weather in different storms … our challenges are all unique and are exactly where we are supposed to be. thank you. it is hard, but i am ‘resilient’. that was my ‘word’ in 2013 and this year it was ‘love’. x

  • Dawn Suzette Dec 17, 2014 @ 14:33

    The living is so good!
    My blog has cobwebs growing over cobwebs and that is just the way it is right now. I find I am savoring things more now that I am not trying to capture everything to share.
    The seasons of life.
    I hope you have a wonderful holiday season, Patricia!

    • patricia Dec 17, 2014 @ 21:05

      Ah, Dawn, it’s so interesting to see someone who was such a regular blogger let go! Although I know you’ve been busy with Mud Puddles to Meteors–and your book project! And I always love seeing you on instagram. “I find I am savoring things more now that I am not trying to capture everything to share.” I like that. Sometimes it’s better to focus less on what we’re not doing, and more on what we’re doing in its place. Happy holidays to you too, Dawn!

  • dawn Dec 18, 2014 @ 18:30

    happy lights-and-laughter to you, too 🙂

    • patricia Jan 2, 2015 @ 14:14

      A very belated thanks, Dawn! I hope your holidays were wonderful.

  • CathyT Dec 31, 2014 @ 18:33

    Merry Merry to you and yours. I am glad you are having GOOD things keeping you from your blog, the living and life rather than trauma and pain, though I know they say you need rain to see the rainbows. Enjoy the season and your upcoming birthday or past birthday celebrations. Live it! And happy new year!

    • patricia Jan 2, 2015 @ 14:16

      Happy new year to you too, Cathy! So nice to still have you reading along after all this time. (My birthday isn’t actually until May. I’m just gearing up because it’s a big one!)

      • CathyT Jan 2, 2015 @ 18:45

        Me too, 50 in March!

  • Nancy Jan 1, 2015 @ 11:07

    Happy New Year!

    • patricia Jan 2, 2015 @ 14:17

      You too, Nancy! Thanks for continuing to show up here!

  • Eliza Twist Jan 2, 2015 @ 14:10

    I just sat down to write the post that I’ve started too many times to count in the past 8 or so months (other posts have gone up in the meanwhile). T’is the season for other things it seems. Happy New Year Patricia!

  • kristin Jan 6, 2015 @ 17:18

    Well I for one have benefitted from many of your pastimes that are taking away from your blogging like: satsuma marmalade, delightful writer’s workshops for my daughter, Destination Imagination to name a few…

    Tricia don’t fret. Your time is well spent as long as your intention is where you want it to be, and you’re engaged.

    You’re fine, my fine friend. You have many admirers because your writing is great! And we want more, much more in whatever form you choose.

    Happy New Year!

    • patricia Jan 12, 2015 @ 9:41

      Hey Kristin,

      I’m finally getting back in the swing of things, nearly a week after your comment.

      Thanks for the never-failing support, and happy new year to you too!

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