Adios, Via con Dios

 

I always promised myself that I wouldn't be one of those bloggers whose blogs just stopped randomly on a post about baking cookies or something. " If I ever stop writing, I'm going to write a proper goodbye."

Well, I realized today that it's been months since I posted, and I need to face reality and make good on that resolution. 

This isn't a good bye to writing. At least, I hope it isn't. I have a few more essays in me, or at least ideas for essays.  I do think this is goodbye to Blogger though. It's been a good experience, but I like Substack better, and I think it lends itself better to the less frequent but longer form writing that I'm beginning to lean towards. 

Well...it will be, when I actually start writing with any sort of regularity again. I love homeschooling, but it really does sap the thinking/logical/sequential part of my brain in a way that makes writing really difficult. Being able to write is important to me, and I hope to somehow retain or reclaim it, but this season just isn't a time where I can do that. 

 I've also been noticing addictive tendencies in myself and have been (largely unsuccessfully) trying to break away from my phone -- which has been my primary method of updating this space.

 Between those two factors, I think I need to formalize stepping away for a bit. 

At the time of writing this, my family is doing well. Chris is happily working for a school district he loves working with, my children are learning and thriving being homeschooled, and I'm enjoying teaching them more than I thought I would. I've turned to sewing and hand quilting as a creative outlet (I moonlight by sewing for a local boutique now!)-- it uses different brain muscles than writing or homeschooling does. There's some thorns among the roses, and always will be, but on the whole we're happy. 

Quilt I'm currently working on. 

If you're still following this blog enough to check in on it and would like to see if I come up with anything else, my Substack, Ramblings, is here. I don't charge anything to subscribe to it, and have no plans to in the foreseeable future. It also emails you when I write something, so it's a lot less work to keep up with. (Full disclosure, at least some of my future posts there will be re-runs of longer form essays from here. There's some stuff here I'd like to update and keep). 

A sincere thank you to those who have followed me for the past couple years. I've enjoyed chatting with you in the comment section, sharing ideas, and learning from you. 

Until we meet again...

- Emily