The Week of No Content

Ok, I must admit: I'm in a blog rut. I have been racking my brain all week trying to think of something to write about and I came up empty, so here we are. I adore this blog space for Hank updates, keeping track of my reading, a place to share favorite recipes, and the musings of our daily lives. I've kept this blog for over three years. Can you believe that?! I started it on a whim and I have loved keeping it up (and still do!). 

Visiting Hadley 

A few weeks ago I read back some old posts and man, things got deep around here. In the midst of daily life, we managed to buy a home, navigate the early years of marriage, I switched from being a charter school teacher to a district teacher, we were pregnant twice, welcomed two beautiful babies into the world, and we're raising our handsome hilarious son and missing our gorgeous perfect daughter. That's a lot. And life has been crazy, messy, beautiful, amazing, hard....sometimes all in the same month, week, day even. We're in a time of peace right now (I write this as Hank has discovered his ability to crawl and life as we know it has changed. Ha), but I want to sit in this space and savor it. Relaxing times deserve to be written about too. Daily life deserves its own space in the memory books. 

Writing a daily post is just not workable for me in this season. And you know what? It's okay! I don't want every piece of me shared in a post. I want to get coffee with a friend and share about things I haven't written about. I want to call a friend and discover insights through talking. The internet can be a powerful tool, but I never ever want it to replace real and true live connection. 

But I still, constantly, feel the need to write, about simply living, the daily ebb and flow. I find glimpses of the holy, the heartfelt and the hilarious and I feel like recording it in the written word. Right now I'm in a season of just sitting with it all. Embracing the quiet (well, not really quiet at all...more like the sort of peaceful?). Being a working teacher mom feels like a delicate balancing act on the best days and a circus on the worst. I'm a wife, mom, teacher, and friend and sometimes it's hard not to compartmentalize those parts of me. So, I'm trying, against my very nature, to just "be" and guys, I need to be real....having nothing to write about this week drove me crazy. I don't do well with just "being"....I'm working on it! ENFJ's/Type A's where you at?! 

But instead of typing out a post I'd been drafting this week, I spent extra time watching Hank crawl, snuggling with AJ and watching TV or reading, hitting the gym, going to bed earlier, calling a friend, making a dessert. It felt so perfect. I promised myself when I began this blog that if it ever felt like work, I'd call it quits. And it never really has. But this week it did. So I put it on the back burner and I'm glad I did. 

Shauna Niequist (one of my all time favorite authors) says sometimes we need to sit back and "let the waves do their work in you." So I'm here, awash in life, and trying not to lose sight of myself as a writer of the beautiful ordinary. There, I said it: I'm a writer. It's who I am and I love it. Even when it seems like there's nothing to write about. Maybe it took a blank blog slate for me to realize there's so much I still want to say. It might be trivial, it might be simple, but it's mine. And I'm so thankful for it. This blog hasn't seen the last of me yet. 

Savor Your Sparkle,
Leslie