For about 11 1/2 years, I’ve been writing this blog. I’ve done over 2900 posts in that time, and most of the time, I’ve been writing 5 posts weekly. About a year ago, I decided to go down to 2 posts weekly because I felt like I was starting to struggle with what to write. It was hard to let myself be ok with not writing every day, but I’m glad I made that change a year ago. I felt like I had to find things to write about instead of just writing about what I wanted to write about. I also made changes to how I wrote about my workouts and made them more like a general post instead of going into details about my workouts. Even with the changes I made, I still had this blog as a big part of my life for over a decade.
But I’ve decided that it’s time for me to step away from this blog, at least for a little bit. I haven’t been feeling that inspired to write here. My life hasn’t been that crazy, and I’m starting to appreciate the boringness of my life at times. Yes, I still want to have excitement and I’m trying to not just live the same life every single week. But I also know that if I need a weekend at home doing a lot of nothing, there is value in that. And even with only writing one non-workout post a week, sometimes I still feel a bit of pressure to have something happening in my life so I can write about it. Or if I have a lot of things happening within a week or two, I feel the pressure to decide what thing I should write about and what thing I should skip since I don’t want to write about an event weeks after it happened.
It’s crazy to think about how I started the blog in my 20s and now I’m in my 40s. My entire 30s were documented on here and that’s something I’m so grateful for. There have been countless times when I was trying to remember something and I searched my blog for the post about it. It’s been an incredible scrapbook for a big chunk of my life. I have changed my life in so many ways since I started writing. And even with the struggles I’ve had, things have improved so much for me. I don’t think my life is perfect, but the things I have now are things that I wished for years ago. I have a much more stable living situation, which is something that I will always appreciate. I have made a lot of changes in my health but more importantly, in my fitness.
It’s because of this blog that I discovered Orangetheory. I was invited to a blogger preview and I know I wouldn’t have found it as soon as I did without that preview workout. I rarely was in the neighborhood of that first studio before working out there, so I might not have found the perfect workout for me until they opened the studio in my neighborhood. I can’t imagine what my life would be like now if I wasn’t invited to that workout. I’ve had a lot of great things come my way because of this blog, but I think that finding my workout home is easily the best thing that happened because I started this blog.
I found new communities because of my posts. I met new friends that I still keep in touch with, even though almost all of them have stopped blogging by now. I think the blogging world isn’t what it used to be and that’s ok. Things like blogs are trends that come and go and it seems like people have been using other ways to be creative and have a voice. I think I’m starting to feel that way as well. When I started writing, it was a creative outlet that I knew was missing in my life. I don’t necessarily have a new outlet that I have started to use, but I’m more active on social media and that’s a bit of creativity for me. Again, the things I needed and felt were missing in my life in my late 20s are different from what I feel like I need now.
I also find it a little poetic that the day this post will come out will be the 4th anniversary of the last normal day we had before the pandemic. I think most people think of that Friday the 13th as the last normal day even if things weren’t totally shut down right after that. And the pandemic caused such a huge shift in my life, just like it did for almost everyone. I wish that not everything had to change the way it did, but I was forced to adapt to what came my way and I’ve been trying to make the best of it. But I also know that being forced to change is sometimes the only way that change will happen, so I am grateful that I have been able to make positive changes and create a pretty awesome situation for myself.
I don’t know if this will be the last post I write on here or not. I might take a few months off and miss writing so I start things up again. I might realize that I want to write randomly when something big happens so I write a few posts a year. I’m not setting any rules or ideas for this break for now because I don’t know how I will feel during my time away. I thought going down to 2 posts a week would stress me out and I’d miss writing, but it ended up being the best choice for me. I don’t know how much longer I could have kept up 5 posts weekly. I think this last year was much less stressful because I didn’t have that pressure on myself to keep going. And I’m hoping I’ll have another positive reaction to this new break.
So I guess this is it for now. It’s not necessarily a goodbye, but I’m not sure when I’ll be back on here again. But if I come back to start writing again, it will be from a fresh perspective after having some time away. And if I decide to not write here again in the future, thank you to all of you who have been following my journey. Whether you’ve been reading since I started in July 2012 or this is somehow the first post you’ve read. I have been so grateful that people have been interested in what I have to say and what I think. This blog has given me a voice when I really needed one and I have been so lucky to have an audience for this long.
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