Honest to Blog

I've been off the blogging scene for quite a while now, and despite the pangs of guilt now and again - I haven't really missed it. Sometimes when you find yourself juggling too many things in your life, it's better to put a few down for a moment rather than haphazardly continue and end up dropping them all.  Blogging I love the blogging world, I really do. I enjoy coming up with ideas to write about, I love putting things together and reading any comments back on things - especially when they disagree with me. I enjoy the debate, the conversation, the community and finding members of your 'tribe' from all around the world though a shared interest.  I also loved blogging because it was the closest to writing for a magazine (the dream hob) that I could get. It was a way of testing the waters - seeing if I was any good, working out what I liked to write about without any pressure. Then it all just broke. I'd come here to write and sit staring at a blank screen for a few minutes before refreshing Facebook and abandoning it. I rearranged my blog design, and tried to write about new things - to no avail. It was all just, wrong. You know how one day, you might walk into your living room that you're previously been quite content with, and decide it's time for a re-arrange? Have you ever browsed your wardrobe and not really felt like any of it suited you that day? Well I've been feeling like that about my blog everyday for quite some time - and have finally decided that it's more than needing a fresh lick of paint.  I'm starting a new blog. Fresh start, clean slate. I've really enjoyed blogging here but it's all feeling a little uncomfortable, like something I've outgrown. I'm you will come and join me over on my new space of internet when I move there in a few weeks. :) Have you ever felt disenchanted with your blog?  Friendships It's also really lovely so have such a mix of friends, but everyone having such different schedules and responsibilities can make it hard work. It's really disheartening to make tentative plans with people, only to have everyone back out at the last minute. Even more so when someone accidentally gets left out. Feeling guilty about being so busy/preoccupied that you forget about a friend is the worst. How do you find time to keep up with everyone in your friendship circle? Is there a knack to it?! The fear and worry that you might be losing a friendship due to your own apparent inability to find time for them in your life is the worst. I'd rather have a hundred awful days at work than one more day of feeling like I've dropped the ball and can't pick it up again. Feeling Overwhelmed We live in a truly awful age where we all glorify being 'busy'. If you're not busy then you're being lazy or your life isn't full enough. There's some strange, invisible, suffocating pressure to always be hustling and reaching for the next big thing. It's not enough to just have a job and exist. I have to be studying, blogging, working towards a promotion, getting thinner/fitter, getting better at all-the-things.  The pressure to achieve more, and be more is crippling. It makes you jealous rather than joyful for your friends and colleagues successful, because for some stupid reason it only throws your own shortcomings into sharper relief. It makes me feel guilty when I'm out enjoying myself, it makes me check emails whilst watching films and work through my lunch breaks. It makes the thought of having to make plans with people I adore exhausting, because it's yet another thing I have to worry about.  Perhaps sometimes you have to get off the treadmill, and stop the juggling. If only it weren't so hard, and there wasn't such fear attached to 'letting go'?