Bringing it back

I stopped writing new posts for this blog in November of 2014. At the time I was feeling burnt out and overwhelmed with a lot of things, so I thought I would take a break from writing to "create more time". Shortly afterwards when 2015 didn't start off on a pleasant note, I really struggled to find peace within. I felt frustrated with many things - relationships, my job, the overriding disorganization of my home, stress, and a feeling of a loss of control over my time. I didn't feel like I had much that I wanted to share so I decided to stop writing and posting altogether.

As the year went on, however, I found that I missed documenting and sharing our family's memories on this blog a lot. The whole reason I started writing in the first place was to share our family's experiences and memories (and photos) with friends and family that live out of town. I enjoyed looking back on posts that I had written to reflect on fun past memories. I even had bigger future plans to publish all the blog posts in a keepsake book for our family.

But an unrecognized side benefit, that I didn't realize until last year when I stopped, was that writing my thoughts here helped me to formally recognize and reflect on the blessings in my life. Deep down I know I am very blessed and I believe I generally feel grateful most of the time. But once the wallowing self-pity related to frustrations I experienced at the start of last year took over, I stopped letting the good and positive feelings come to the surface most of the time. And not having this space as a means of reflection didn't help at all. Not writing here didn't necessarily "create more time" for other things. I missed documenting our memories and reflecting on blessings.

So in the spirit of gratitude and peacefulness at the start of this new year, I am giving myself permission to start posting again. I am excited to use this space as a means of reflection, and to write about our family's adventures and experiences together again. The year 2016 has started off nicely so far and I look forward to enjoying (and sharing) the many blessing that the rest of the year brings.