Sorry for being absent for so long, but life gets in the way of things sometimes. And that has certainly been my struggle for the past month. Health concerns and running our household (while ill) on my own while my husband was away for a month of training kind of put both my DIY plans and this blog on the back burner. Please accept my apologies for disappearing. I hadn't planned on being gone for so long, but now that I've regained most of my energy, I am ready to kick things back into gear!
Today I wanted to start things off kind of simple. I have a few things around the house to share with you, like my fall mantle, but part of me wanted to just speak from the heart a little bit on the subject of perfection. I am guilty as all get-out of being a perfectionist. Sometimes to the point that, if it isn't perfect, it's not worth doing. Anyone else feel that kind of pressure? I'll also say that in putting myself out there with this blog, I began to feel more and more like I had to do things "just right", or post a certain amount of times a week to stay fresh. To be truthful, I've never been good at keeping a routine. It's just not who I am. And while I'm a self-proclaimed list addict and I would consider myself organized, but I've never kept a journal or diary. Trust me, I've tried. And after a while I would slowly tumble off the wagon. The longest I've kept a journal was 6 months-- when I wrote to my husband nightly during our first deployment as a couple. At the time, we had been married for only two months, and I was pregnant with our daughter when he left. It was actually very therapeutic for me to use it as a means to "talk" to my husband, even when he couldn't be there, and I think it helped me relieve a lot of stress. So why didn't I keep writing once my husband returned home? Well, those of you who have children know that babies can be a handful. In fact, my husband didn't even come home until a month after our daughter was born. You can imagine my stress for that last month. I also had a relationship to resume with my other half, and after spending so much time apart, it took us time to both readjust. Deployments are emotionally hard on both parties, and it takes time to find your groove again. So much had changed for us both now that we were parents, too. I guess I felt that writing in a journal would be irrelevant now that my husband was home and I could just talk directly to him.
So, you see, my diary days were short-lived. I think that is part of the guilt I feel in making sure that I stick with this blog and the need for "perfection". I intended it to be a way for me to relieve my stress on the projects I like to bury myself under, but it is also a way for me to communicate with our family and friends and keep them up to par on what we've been doing. Instead, I've been setting myself "guidelines" on what I should write about and how often, and I would compare myself with some of my favorite blogs to read and feel like a failure because I wasn't completing projects on the same level.
My little hiatus gave me the opportunity to step back from things and gain a new perspective. I also gained a new blog title in the process! I felt as though I was heading in a direction that felt forced and confined when I would rather have the opportunity to freely share what matters to me. I am really looking forward to picking up my hammer and paint brush again, but I'd also like to add another dimension of DIY into the mix... baking/recipes, arts/crafts and sewing, and maybe even our classic car restoration. And rather than keep a library of posts stocked up and scheduled, I'd like to just write about what inspires me at that moment rather than cranking out posts like a machine.
Does anyone else find themselves in the perfection trap? What do you think of the new blog name? I happen to think it suits me pretty well, and thank my husband for his genius in coming up with it (shh... don't tell him I said that. I'll never hear the end of it). :)
My little hiatus gave me the opportunity to step back from things and gain a new perspective. I also gained a new blog title in the process! I felt as though I was heading in a direction that felt forced and confined when I would rather have the opportunity to freely share what matters to me. I am really looking forward to picking up my hammer and paint brush again, but I'd also like to add another dimension of DIY into the mix... baking/recipes, arts/crafts and sewing, and maybe even our classic car restoration. And rather than keep a library of posts stocked up and scheduled, I'd like to just write about what inspires me at that moment rather than cranking out posts like a machine.
Does anyone else find themselves in the perfection trap? What do you think of the new blog name? I happen to think it suits me pretty well, and thank my husband for his genius in coming up with it (shh... don't tell him I said that. I'll never hear the end of it). :)
No comments:
Post a Comment