Restarting (Again (again again))

First Published: 2023 July 18

Draft 1

I logged on this morning to see what my last post was, getting ready to have not written for about two weeks. I suppose that seventeen days is around two weeks, but it’s somehow far more disheartening to see that I last blogged my monthly reflection. Some of the time I feel less bad about missing.

From the 9-15, for instance I was at a conference.¹ On the 16 and 17, I was in rural parts of the state doing UitP events.² And before the 9-15, I was volunteering at a service trip from the 5-7.³

However, I still feel bad about missing the postings during all of those days. While I have the hazy blur of great times spent at all three of those events, that doesn’t have the same element of memory that remembering to log my days each day tends to bring. I also fell off of writing basically entirely.

At the start of the month, I was nearly three chapters ahead of writing. By the end of the first week of July, I was no chapters ahead. Since then, each chapter has been written scant hours and minutes before it needs to be posted, and I can see a clear decrease in quality as a result. There were no poems, no songs, and no new journal entries written during this time either.

I think that the lack of writing really is⁴ getting to me. I feel far less grounded without the structures I have intentionally installed in my life, and I think that writing is legitimately one of the bedrock ones somehow. So, I hope that as I continue this month and future months, I will remember that the future version of me is inordinately grateful for the writing I do, especially compared to how much effort it really is to write.

In terms of goals for the month:

• Despite the fact that I’ve been home for a total of seven nights this month, which includes recovery crashes⁵, I have managed to improve the cleanliness of the home.

• Well, I completely dropped the ball on blogging, but also all writing.

• I’ll defend myself from⁶ accusations of not exercising, because I have been away from home. I did swim for the first time in ages last Monday, which was really fun. I need to get back into it.

• While I haven’t gotten my sleep schedule back to that, partially it is again outside of my locus of control. When I’m at a conference that has pseudo-mandatory social time until eleven at night and nothing scheduled until half eight⁷, it’s hard to motivate myself to wake at six. I have been intentional about sleeping enough, though.

• I was doing great on prayer during the first week of the month⁸. Since then, it’s been a bit more of a struggle, and this does remind me to be more intentional about it.

• Though I didn’t get ahead, I’m still proud of myself for keeping up with the publishing schedule throughout all of the chaos I’ve endured. Now that life⁹ calms down, I think getting five chapters ahead is reasonable. Doing some quick math¹⁰, I need six new chapters to keep up with the publishing schedule. Being five chapters ahead plus publishing six means writing eleven. There are fourteen days¹¹, so I should absolutely be able to get ahead. It means less than a chapter a day, and I know that there will be days that I can write two.¹²

• Though poetry felt like a reasonable goal, I have fallen completely off of that train. Now that I’m going to be sleeping in my own bed again, though, I think it can come back.

• Of all my goals, I think this is the one I’ve done best on. I’ve written three letters, though haven’t addressed the last two¹³. It’s a really nice morning hobby, and I think that I will absolutely be bringing it back.

Well, I suppose losing half the month would make my daily reflection more into a half-month’s reflection, so it makes sense that the goals took longer than expected.

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