Hi! Did you miss me?

Years ago, I read an article that blog writers should never start a post with an apology for not writing in a while. I can’t remember exactly what the reasoning was in the article, but I thought it was good advice and I resolved never to do so. My primary reasoning, since I can’t remember the article’s reasoning, is because this is my space, dang it, and if I don’t want to be here, then I don’t have to be here. And I don’t have to apologize for that. And secondly, starting posts with apologies is really boring to read.

So, you’re not getting an apology. But I do want to write about my absence a little bit becuase I have been thinking about what was behind it and figured I might as well share that. There are two primary reasons, I think, behind my lack of posting here.

One is that I stopped writing almost entirely once I started using a tablet to read the Internet instead of my laptop. My laptop has gotten old and very slow and it doesn’t do me much good on a day-to-day basis. I tend to read a lot of different things on the internet and I can read all of those things more quickly and with less weight just by reading on my small, handheld tablet. My tablet has been one of my favorite purchases in the last several years. So much of what I do can be done using the tablet instead of a full processing personal computer — with one glaring lack. I stopped writing.

I don’t tend to write using my tablet. Primarily because it’s a pain in the butt to use the integrated keyboard for long lengths of text. I didn’t even text much with people I know online using it becuase I got so frustrated with how slowly I’d have to type compared to how fast I can type  on a keyboard, and I’d get more typos and autocorrect errors and it was SUPER FRUSTRATING. So I stopped. Mostly. I kept typing to one or two key people because they kept texting to me, but otherwise, I mostly went silent.

And the not writing didn’t bother me too much because of the second reason, which was that I was feeling more and more vulnerable about how my life was not feeling very private. I started to back away from any social media and places where my personal life was available to people outside of my own home. (Not that I was much online anywhere, but anyway…) The reasons behind this are partially because I was getting overwhelmed at work and with stress and a lot of things that were only happening inside of my own head. But the solution that I found was to curl up into myself and not share.

And I think that was healthy, to an extent. The amount of information that we willingly share on the Internet is massive, and there is a point, for everybody, where you should hit the point of “I’m not going to share that.” (For some people, that point is WAY FURTHER past where it should be…) I think it’s normal and important to sometimes stand back and evaluate what information you’re sharing with which groups of people and think about if it’s appropriate and think about what’s happening that could or shouldn’t be shared and to be cognizant of the difference.

Of course, in my evaluation of what was happening in my life, most of what I came up with was the fact that I was working. A lot. And that it wasn’t something I could/should share and if I did, it wouldn’t be terribly interesting. So I didn’t.

And on top of that, I didn’t think people would care or notice if I stopped typing, so why not? If I didn’t want to write and people wouldn’t care if I didn’t, then why did I go through the trouble? And that may or may not be true — since I’m not sure that anyone other than the people in my immediate family actually even know this website exists, and as far as I know, only the women of that audience have ever cared to read it. If that’s my whole audience, then shouldn’t I just be able to communicate with those people in other mediums?

Except I haven’t.

I mostly just sunk into working too much, doing little else, and getting more and more mired in the muck in my head.

So, finally, I’m working on changing that.

Justin bought me a keyboard for my tablet. He’d asked me several other times if I’d want one and I kept telling him that I  didn’t think the expense would be worth it. But we’re working on setting up a new computer as a media server (for all the CD’s he spent months coping digital copies of) and we were going to need a keyboard to use for that computer. And he found a keyboard that would easily switch between three different devices and asked if I’d be interested in that.

So now I have a keyboard for my tablet! Which means I can enjoy all the ease and speed of my tablet AND still be able to type!

On top of that, Justin and I had a heartfelt conversation about how I needed to stop working so much. I’d been working 50+ hour weeks since October and I was not holding up under the strain. I’d started thinking about finding another job, just to be able to walk away from all the problems I’d been dealing with in this one. The outcome from that discussion was that there were two options: Work could have me for 40 hours or they could have me for 0 hours. I would actively start concentrating at leaving ON TIME and not working overtime. And either things would pile up because I wasn’t working enough or I’d find a way to make it work in the 40 hours in my week. And if they piled up and the company decided I needed to work more hours, then I would leave. Or if I couldn’t find a way to be happy with the amount of backlog that was happening because I wasn’t working overtime, then I would leave. Either way, it was going to be 40 or nothing.

It’s been about a month, and I’ve been at 45 hours or less that whole time. And it’s been VERY HARD. But so far, no one in my department blames me for cutting back. And no one has said anything about my job performance needing to improve. And while I sometimes have to tell myself that it will be FINE. Just leave it. Go home. Do it tomorrow… I’m getting better.

And cutting back on my hours and my stress means that I’ve opened up my brain space to deal with other things that have been stuck up in there, lurking, waiting, rotting. And I’m working through them.

My concerns about what I share publicly are still relevant and there are a lot of things happening right now that I’m not going to write about. But I think I’m going to try to at least write SOMETHING. After all, I have this shiny new keyboard that needs to get used.