I decided to restart this site as a going concern — not that I had ever really decided to stop it being a going concern, as such, but things happen and real life gets in the way — at the start of 2019 as a little bit of selfishness and a small amount of self discipline, mixed together. My 2018 had ended dramatically, and I was in a very different place than I had been a year earlier, both emotionally and physically. The notion of having a place where I could “be myself,” whatever that might mean, and write things for me, as opposed to work or for friends or whatever, was a very exciting one.
I started it, also, not knowing how long I’d keep it up. This wasn’t going to be the first time I’d promise myself I’d do this, after all, and previous attempts had run aground all-too-quickly, for various reasons. This time, things would be different, I half-heartedly told myself, because this time, I was different.
I set myself a schedule — three posts a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays — with occasional quote-posts in between if I found anything interesting and remembered to do it. And I set off.
At some point, somewhere in the middle of February or the beginning of March, I realized that I’d actually managed to write ahead enough that I was scheduled out with posts three weeks in the future or so. It was, to some degree, thrilling, but also a relief; that way, it seemed less likely that I’d drop off altogether, because now I had a buffer. Surely, if the worst came to the worst, I’d find the chance to find time to write within that three week window and refill my schedule appropriately?
For months, I did. And then, for some reason, June just killed me. It wasn’t that my workload increased — if anything, I was maybe less productive than I had been in other months? — but my concentration was shot, somehow. Weeks went by without me writing here, or writing very little, and suddenly… I had no buffer left.
I was faced with the prospect of either taking a break from the site or deciding to stick with it and just, well, write. I chose the latter, and I’m surprisingly glad that I did. It sounds odd, I know, but I feel like I chose something selfish in a good, positive way. Is this place self-care for me? Is that too pretentious to suggest? Or simply too honest?