Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Balance

It drives me crazy when I have things I want to blog about and I feel like I shouldn't or can't really publicly write about them. As a general rule I have just decided that for myself, blogging about work or career related things isn't a great idea. If you do a Google search for my full name this blog will not come up, but I just don't want to take that chance.

The whole concept about what I should and shouldn't blog about is something I struggle with too. Back when I had a blog on xanga I used to write about a lot more stuff. Honestly, it was a lot more fun for me then too. Maybe it was because writing there was also a bit of a writing exercise and helped warm me up to write papers or maybe it was just procrastination, but I have to believe that being more open was what made it more enjoyable too. Then I graduated, moved to Chicago, got a job, and started knitting. I thought starting a knitting blog too would be great, but having two blogs was just tedious, so I got rid of them both. Then I started this one up thinking that I would have a fresh start and could blog about both the everyday random things and my knitting. Recently, that has been working better but like I said, I am still struggling with how open I really want to be.

On a recent podcast (if only I could remember which one that was) the podcasters were talking about how obnoxious it can be when you read a blog and everything is happy all the time, nothing is ever wrong, and everything is just too perfect. I kind of feel like that is what I should put in here sometimes and quite frankly I'm really bored with that too. That makes the whole blog feel so sterile and then you have things happen like last year when I didn't blog for months at a time because things in my life were not entirely stable (a.k.a the second half of 2008 when we were in a really temporary place just waiting for the whole bar exam process to be over and to be able to move forward again) or happy (late January and February, I am looking in your direction). At the same time I never want to be one of those blogs where every day it is a new complaint or some overblown drama. (Although if you are a fan of overblown drama I can point you in that direction, I encounter it frequently on facebook.)

I never really made a post about New Year's resolutions beyond some basic knitting goals because I didn't really make any. As January progresses I am finding one theme I keep returning to and that is balance. In knitting I try to make sure I have something simple and something more complex, some things for me, and as many for other people. I keep trying to plan my meals better so that we have more variety and healthier choices for snacks and meals and get more vitamins and nutrients from vegetables and fruits. I'm looking for part-time work (that is all I will say about it) to balance a professional life and a personal life. I want to find some volunteer projects to work on and I have been attending church much more regularly now in an attempt to find my place in a community rather than just in myself or my personal relationships. Even the church attendence is split between Catholic and Methodist as I find each meets a different set of spiritual needs. I also found my old yoga video so I am working on physical balance too.

I'm not really sure what my whole point is in this post, but after sitting down to write about 5 times in the last week without really saying what I wanted to I thought it was time to just put it out there.

1 comment:

EGunn said...

The public/private choice is hard. I tend to keep more on the private side, but it's difficult to talk about why you're into a project, or why you haven't had time, or why you have all the time in the world without letting a little of the personal stuff out there. And, it's the personal stuff that friendships are made on, so it's hard to feel like a part of a community without sharing a little bit, at least. I agree - it's a balance, and a hard one to strike.