It has been a bad blogging month for me – I haven’t posted anything since the 3rd March and I feel at odds with my blog, out of touch with the blogosphere, and my blogging mojo is distinctly absent-without-leave. Week after week has gone by with my MacBook Air gathering dust on the dining room table, while I formed blog-posts in my mind standing on the tube, nosed pressed into a stranger’s armpit (not through choice you understand), or while walking home from the station, wishing I hadn’t worn heels to work that day: for you see right now, those are the moments where I can indulge in some luxury “me time”, time alone – yes that’s right, my time alone is pretty much just when I’m commuting, oh, and going to the toilet, I’m generally alone for that (although sometimes the cat or Richmond Baby finds a way to barge in) – I know, I know, proper luxurious….
Anyway, you know what it’s like if you have a blogging dry patch – it starts out just a few days, then before you know it, it’s been a week, and you start to get a bit panicky but instead of just sitting down and writing, you start trying to build in an hour or so of quality time to your day/week when you can focus on the blog and get something decent written. And that of course never happens, because something else – life usually – get’s in the way.
So, why is it that I haven’t blogged for the last 22 days? Well…
Work. Work is without a doubt THE number one reason why I haven’t been blogging lately. I went back to work in January, it was pretty full on but manageable. Then it went through a unnervingly calm period, which gave me a false sense of security that I could manage the right work/life balance, then it all kicked off again. Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of good days alongside the challenging ones, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that by the time I get home from 8 hours of fast-paced non-stop rushing around and typing furiously at my desk, plus a total of about 1.5 hours commute a day, and then the “being a mummy” bit at the start and end of each day, frankly by the time 7.30/8pm arrives and Richmond Baby is asleep, all I’m good for is passing out on the sofa and watching University Challenge. I can just about manage to eat dinner, let alone make it! Thankfully, Richmond Daddy seems to have largely taken up the role of Jaime in our house and is building up quite an impressive collection of 30 minute meals, plus on Mondays and Wednesdays dinner is taken care of by my parents or in-laws, who look after Richmond Baby those afternoons, and very kindly have dinner waiting for us when we get in (I know, super lucky). But all in all, the week flies by at such a pace that before I know it I’ve racked up another 7 days without blogging and all those posts formed in my mind are now like leftovers from the Sunday roast I planned to do something with but never did – out of date and a bit stale.
Snot. Snot along with its merry partners a cough, a cold, and suspected flu symptoms, are another reason why blogging has taken a backseat. If it’s not Richmond Baby or even the “I never get ill” Richmond Daddy who’s snotting and coughing all over the place, then it seems nowadays it is me who is regularly coming down with something or other. I have been warned by many that when you have a child, particularly one who is attending nursery, that you just have to cope with the onslaught of illnesses basically until they go to university (or join the circus). And I’m here to verify, that appears to indeed be true. I don’t know who is passing what to whom, my suspicions lie with the baby-faced one, but I have been suffering with a series of wipe-you-out colds, coughs (I’ve experienced both dry and tickly, now we’re onto chesty – which makes me sound like an 88 year old man after too many Woodbines), flu-like aches and pains, and generally feelings of weariness. All of which have left me with zero energy, it’s all I can do to get myself up and out the door, let alone find the necessary spring-in-my-step to write something decent and entertaining here. Sigh.
True Blood. It’s back on TV. This is a good thing. A very good thing. If you are watching the latest series, you will know that it is a particularly good one in which Eric (my favourite vamp) has become all deep and sensitive – which sat a little uneasy with me at first, given that I liked his mean and moody and threatening afore demeanour – but I’m now falling for him all over again in this new guise. However, this has also been getting in the way of me getting busy on the laptop. How so, you ask? Well, with everything that’s been going on, I have little if any time to watch much TV, certainly any TV I do watch I usually multi-task and tap tap tap away on my laptop at the same time as semi-watching some dross or other (Richmond Daddy hates that by the way, but is learning to live with it I think…). But I just can’t do that with True Blood, it demands my full and undivided attention, which means that for 1 hour a week, I am glued to my screen, lusting after Eric, laughing at Lafayette, or wanting to throw the remote control at Sookie (well, come on, she is a teensy-weensy bit annoying, I mean what is it with her and her penchant for wandering through graveyards or densely wooded areas in the middle of the night dressed in a lemon yellow prom dress or flimsy white t-shirt and shorts that could pass for knickers, when all manner of supernaturals are prowling – surely that’s just asking for trouble, and that Tara’s no better, she should just learn to just stay in with the door locked of an evening too!). One hour a week lost to Eric might not sound like a lot (it sounds bloody fantastic actually when I put it like that…), but it’s an hour I’m not blogging in a week when I’m not blogging, in what becomes almost a month when I’m not blogging. And the net result? – I’ve not been blogging. Bad times.
So, today it stops. This not blogging business. Come work, come snot, come Eric, no matter. Today is the first day of the re-focus on my blog. From now on, I WILL find the time and I WILL blog daily… okay, maybe not daily, let’s at least aim for weekly, maybe twice weekly on a good week. I love my little blog and I really want to develop it and grow it and build it into something great. Heck, one day I’d love to maybe even win an award for it (well, it’s good to have hopes and dreams right?). It’s time to make the time to blog.
But this March sunshine’s not going to help…
*throws on sunglasses and rushes to Richmond Green to absorb vitamin D and frolic in outdoor pursuits*
but made easier by lovely nurse at the surgery
