Don’t worry – I’m not going to start belting out the lyrics to Adele’s song (let’s face it…the effect would just get lost in writing). It’s been a while though and, or course, the fault is entirely my own. I haven’t been writing and so you’ve had nothing to read here. I’ve been thinking about this blog a lot over the past few weeks and I think that you deserve to know why I disappeared without warning.
It’s very simple: that little asshole voice took over my inner dialogue and blogging seemed to grind to a halt. Should I explain? Probably. Talking about an inner dialogue always seems to warrant an explanation. We all have an inner dialogue and, more often than not, it can be quite mean to us. When my inner voice decides to be an asshole, it tends to insert doubt. It makes me question myself and then the “what ifs” just pour out like a waterfall. It went a little something like this: “Why are you writing opinion based blog posts? What if you can’t think of anything to write about? What if your opinions are stupid? What if nobody reads it anyways? What if you’re just wasting your time writing when you could be doing better things? …” You get the idea.
Needless to say, it became pity party central over here. I’ll freely admit – I’m in favour of a good (albeit short term) pity party every once in a while…but three months of blog related pity partying was definitely a bit much. I struggled to come up with ideas for blog posts and I felt constantly annoyed by it. From the moment that I started this blog, I have been very clear with myself about how I want to write posts and I found myself considering writing posts like the ones that I hate (I won’t get into detail about the type of posts that I despise). I told myself that, if I wasn’t inspired, I wasn’t going to write anything at all. Hmmm…you can probably see where that plan went wrong. I had given myself permission to stay stagnant…and I apparently decided to coast on that for three solid months. I really can be a grand procrastinator and avoider when I want to be…though I never end up feeling good about it.
Remember back in January when I wrote about my 2016 theme of balance? Well clearly I had not yet found balance when it came to blogging. In fact, 2016 blogging has been on a path towards being an epic failure. This has been another reminder that finding balance often involves a great deal of self-kindness and self-reflection.
So, now I have regrouped and come up with a new plan. Let’s bring this blog back to how it originally started – with me having a great old time ranting and raving about psychology and self-help books that I’ve read. Rather than trying to write about a new book every week, I will instead write about a book every other week. I may be a quick reader, but even I couldn’t keep up with trying to find and plough through a new book each week! I may also write some more opinion based posts on the other weeks…but only if I feel inspired and I will not be putting pressure on myself to do so. And so, with renewed enthusiasm and motivation, I welcome you back to my adventures with self-help and psychology books…all book recommendations are welcome and appreciated!
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