13 April 2012

Prodigal Ginger

I admit it; I abandoned my post(ing).  I have neglected my blog for three months now, during which amazing bloggy things happened, like my receiving two blog awards about which I still need to post, like my 1 year blogiversary and like rolling over past 10,000 pageviews.  I'd even planned a nice post on my blogiversary, which involved significant rumination over what I'd learned in the past 12 months (which wasn't much) about blogging.  Unfortunately, however, as I'm fond of telling the girlie, "Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans."

The grand irony of course is that most of the "life" that occurred in the last calendar year did not actually transpire in the last three months.  Instead, I just let things careen away from me, and once they did, it was hard to reel them back.  This is why I try hard not to break $20s or why I used to try hard not to miss a class in college--once that pristine seal is broken, it's difficult to stop the money flying away or the justifying of why missing another class just won't matter...or why not blogging for three days somehow makes not blogging for three months acceptable.  I'd like to say that I was off somewhere blowing my inheritance in debauchery like the real prodigal son, but I wasn't.  Instead, I started out feeling sorry for myself in January and simply lost the habit.  I blame my daughter.

Last November, as most of you know, I accepted a friend's challenge to blog every day for BlogHer's National Blog Posting Month, something I'm proud to have accomplished.  It wasn't always easy; sometimes I posted random crap at 11:58 pm just to say I hadn't broken the streak.  At the end of November, the hubs asked if I was going to continue through December.  I responded with a very succinct "HELL no!"  Fifteen hours later, I had re-upped for December, with the "brilliant" plan of posting a music video each day.  The videos were fun, but provided such a cop-out that I often didn't get around to writing actual posts.  Still, I made it all the way through November and December successfully and in good shape to continue on through January.  I blogged daily through an appendectomy and recovery, through an infected toe blown up to the size of a hot air balloon, and through minor toe surgery, which amounted to a hangnail-ectomy and massive quantities of antibiotics, and even through the holidays, only to crash and burn when my daughter went back to college after break.

They say it takes 21 days to form a habit, which is apparently true given my unexpected continuation of daily blogging into December.  I've decided, however, that if it takes 21 days to form a new habit, it appears to take only 21 hours to obliterate that habit.  Blog through infection?  Sure.  Blog through surgery?  Easy-peasy.  Blog after saying goodbye yet again to your only child?  Sorry, no, I'll be over here in the corner sobbing, thank you very much.  See, what they don't tell you in the hospital or in any of the parenting books is just how very difficult those separations can be.  You just can't be prepared for them, no matter how long you've been looking forward to unloading your snarky and sullen teenager onto someone else before getting arrested for gross bodily harm.  Doesn't matter.  When the moment comes and you suddenly realize that the kid is not heading off to camp or something, you won't see her in a week or two, that this is the first in a long line of goodbyes to come, it hits you like a ton of bricks because you are torn between the love and excitement of seeing your child off on her journey, of seeing who she will be come, and the deep, excruciating grief of knowing she won't be walking in the door again at any second.

Shorter breaks are easier, because you get too busy trying to cram everything that has to be done before they go, so your focus shifts.  But summers and Christmas break are harder because they are home longer and it starts to feel like it did before they left for college.  It starts to feel again like they will always be there.  And then they aren't, and it feels less like a separation than an excision of your soul from your body.  People say it gets easier.  I'm still waiting for the "easier" part, though to be fair it isn't as hard to leave after visiting my girlie as to have her leave from home.

Anyway, I didn't mean to become quite so maudlin in this post.  Let's just say that I spent a few days throwing a wildly successful pity party after which I returned to life as normal, or as "normal" as it gets here in the Land that Time Forgot.  I cooked, I pretended to clean house, I wasted entirely too much time online.  I finally finished my sewing room, which the girlie then ecstatically played in over Spring Break.  After her break, I traveled to New York to go to a big SCA event with her and got to meet a bunch of her local Thescorre peeps.  Other stuff happened, about which I will no doubt retroactively blog later.  While I can't promise that I will still manage to blog daily, I am at least going to try a few times a week.  I've decided that since Easter is traditionally a time of renewal and rebirth, regardless of whether or not one is religious, now is as good a time as any to get my rear in gear, so to  speak, and to work on some of those New Year's Resolutions that also conveniently fell by the wayside along with my blog.  I read not too long ago that a person has two choices in life--you can make excuses or you can make progress.

Today I choose progress.

No comments:

Post a Comment