Reset Button

I forgot to post on Saturday and I only realized it Sunday morning. When I did, I wasn't overcome with frustration with myself and felt no sadness about the fact that I was not going to meet the goal of blogging every day in 2014. In fact, I felt relieved, so much so that I chose not to blog yesterday either. The weekend was full in the best possible way. Friday night, we went out to dinner with our friends and their children (six adults and five kids) and it was loud and fun which is not a combination I always enjoy. Saturday, Luisa and I took the kids to the Lego Movie and we took pictures of ourselves with all the stupid things in the lobby and ate too much candy and popcorn. That night, I played Minecraft with my kids and we had so much fun together that we didn't want to go to bed. Yesterday, Luisa and I went skiing with Zeca while Miguel did homework and then, last night, I went to my writing group which I needed so very much.

I spent a lot of time thinking about blogging and internet life last week and at one point, thought, "Remember when you were writing a book?" It's not so much that I had forgotten but more that it was easy to put it aside once I finished the draft. I do that a lot - I almost finish things.

And then, last night at my writing group, Tracy and I talked about blogging every day and Nina asked if it helped us or took us away from other writing and my thought from earlier in the week came back to me - my book.

Yes, blogging every day takes away from my other writing goals.

When I set out to blog every day, I envisioned it as writing practice and hoped that it would keep my brain firing so that I would be full of energy and ideas for my other work. I also hoped that I would produce some quality posts, even though I knew not every one would be great.

During the actual practice of blogging every day for the past six weeks, however, I'm not sure the quality was there, though I did reconnect with my more humorous roots. I also realized that it wasn't serving as writing practice - I found myself scrambling to post most nights. It was late and I was tired and there was no way to spin gold from the cobwebs in my brain.

The fact is that I do a lot - VillageQ, Listen To Your Mother and recaps for Autostraddle. Blogging every day here is not realistic right now.

So, with that realization, I am letting go. Goals are important but it is also important to set new ones when you realize the old ones aren't serving you.

This post is my reset button. I'm not abandoning the blog but I won't be posting every day. We'll see what goal emerges next.

PHOTO CREDIT: VIKKI REICH