Category Archives: balance

Hitting the Pause Button…on Blogging. Thanks, Blissdom.

balance, life, writing

Happening around here this week…

  • My son has been driving me around, from Target to Costco and beyond, practicing with his permit.
  • My other son is away at a sleepover camp, and I heard he’s already downed 7 blue slushies.
  • My littlest boy tried out for a soccer team for the first time ever. Even though he made a team, I tryouts at this age make me shudder.
  • My great-grandma in-law is turning 90 and dealing with dementia.
  • My mother had surgery. (She’s doing fine, thanks.)

Post-worthy topics, all of these.

There’s so much to say. So much to share with and learn from all of you.

But I’m not going to post about any of these things.

This past February, I attended Blissdom, an information-packed, fun-filled, swag-fantastic blogging conference. I’d been taking an online writing class from Meagan Francis and several of my classmates at Blissdom, too. I met Danielle and Sarah and Doña and our fearless leader Meagan; I met my editor at Babble; I listened to the wise words of Jon Acuff and Jeff Goins and Michael Hyatt.

And by the way…Michael Hyatt? He’s a rock star. If I turn out half as solid as that guy, I’m golden.

The speakers challenged me in so many ways, but most of all they challenged me to go deeper. To write what I love. To be who I am. It sounds wishy-washy and woo-woo-y and obvious, I know, but I promise you it’s not.

It’s about using this one short life intentionally. It’s thinking about the end of my life and what I want my family and friends to remember. It’s thinking about if that happened, right now, what they really would remember—and making changes while I still can.

It’s thinking about what matters most.

I’ve been blogging for several years about kids and life, reading, learning, travel, and more. So much more. I’ve found friends and a community I never realized existed. I treasure all of that.

But today I’m hitting the pause button. I’ve ramped up my freelance writing for magazines and businesses, which is fantastically fun. It also means I have deadlines in addition to a family and friends. And yoga. And playing basketball. And travelling. You get the picture.

I’m taking a few months off from blogging, but I’ll be writing more than ever. You can still find old content by clicking the words in the cloud on the left—it’s not going anywhere.

And in the meantime, if you need a writer or speaker, by all means, holla.

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Living With Intention

balance, friendship, life, Wise Words, , , ,

It started when my son began Kindergarten.

“Just wait,” people said. “Wait until he gets to high school. You won’t believe how fast the time flies.”

“Enjoy them,” said the older ladies in the supermarket, as my toddler screamed and wiggled in the seat strap and my baby struggled to be seen in the cart, nestled between the Cheerios and peanut butter.

And they were right, of course. The time is flying.

But it’s not just our offspring’s childhood that can slip by, suddenly gone, without us comprehending where it went or how that happened or savoring the difficult moments along with the lovely, sunnier ones.

It’s friendships.

And meaningful work.

It’s faith.

And marriage.

Emerson said it this way in his essay, Prudence.

“Life wastes itself while we are preparing to live.”

What a terrible truth.

We hear it often, don’t we, that we must live in the moment? So often, we roll our eyes at this advice and wonder how on earth we can live with intention and focus on the Important Things when we have diapers to change and groceries to purchase and laundry to wash.

And the truth is, the wonderful truth, that we can’t do it all. We can drop that notion as quickly as we picked it up. We can work. We can mother. We can be wives. We can do the Important Things but we must take one simple and critical step first:

We must identify what is truly important to us.

And your Important Things won’t be the same as my Important Things.

When we know what’s most Important to us, it’s much easier to choose. It’s easier to let the laundry go for a day, or skip a soccer game for a much-needed laugh with 4 of the funniest friend a girl could ask for.

What’s worth Living with Intention to you?

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I have so much more to learn.

academics, balance, life

photo by armatoj

How can it be?  Howcan I be this many years into life, and marriage, and friendship, andparenthood, how did I make it all the way through high school biology,trigonometry, and AP English to the hallowed halls of my lovely university, andstill come out on the other side just beginning to learn?
If you glanced around my house right now, here’s some ofwhat you’d see: Buy-ology, from the library, on my kitchen counter; dog-earedcopies of Blue Nights and Unaccustomed Earth proudly taking the top spot on thepile of books beside my bed; Sunday’s paper, still unread, resting onedge of the kitchen table.  So there’sthat.  The book learning.
But there’s so much more. There’s the thinking, the wondering, the understanding—or wantingto.  There’s the nuance and the subtletythat I sometimes miss, and sometimes can’t avoid.  It’s the whys and the hows that trip me up,that call to me, that keep me coming back, reaching, grasping for more.
I could’ve stayed in school forever, maybe.  For the book learning, yes.  But more for the thinking, the lengthydiscussions with others, the swirling of ideas, the ‘discovering’ ancient ideasthat are new again, the contemplation: why are these ideas back again, or not.
I have so much more to learn.


I’m linking up with Heather:  check it out to find lots of writers thoughtfully writing in the moment.

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