Rules

So, I'm back. And in order to come back, I had to remember that there are no rules. 

I don't have to be the perfect blogger - in fact, I don't even have to fit the profile. I don't need to drum up a following, and I don't need to cater to a particular audience.

Somewhere along the way, the expectations I had of myself - and the expectations I imagined others had of me - stopped being an impetus, and turned into bricks that gradually stacked up into a wall, that I backed up to - and then I sat down. I went from inspired to concerned,  and determined that every single time I decided to occupy this space, it had to be better than the last. I would need photographs, and there would need to be one big, overarching point neatly illustrated with quirky anecdotes laced with wry humor - but before even getting to this point, I would need to in fact do something interesting enough to write about. 

If that's not evidence enough that I forgot what this was supposed to be all about, I don't know what is. This is about listening to my smallest voice - not the very largest one, that shrill, ugly, booming voice that vacillates from the pit of my stomach to being that booming, canon-fire voice that sounds over the tops of buildings and trees, reaching to where I sit small to remind me that what I'm doing will never be enough. 

There is a time for being humble, and there is a time for reassessing - and that, I think, is also a large part of why I departed for a time. Bringing up that reassessment to bear up under public scrutiny, I felt, might induce exactly the sort of navel-gazing I am determined to avoid. 

So even if I'm doing nothing more than cooking dinner, taking evening strolls with the dog, or fencing myself in for a while to crochet a blanket for a friend (while I shamelessly watch episode after episode of Dexter on Netflix), I'm going to try to find healthy, productive, and necessary ways of integrating this space back into my life. It means too much to me to just let it go. 

xo