"Don't stress, don't stress, don't stress"*

I will never apologize to you, dear readers, for going long stretches of time without writing on my blog. It's not that I don't appreciate you...I cherish each and every one of you (really, it's not that hard to send out a little love to five or so people!).

It's just that when I started this blog I did it for fun. I wanted to have a place to exercise my personal literary voice and my opinions and thoughts. I said to myself, "I'm not going to stress about this whole blog thing. If I feel like posting, I will, but if I don't feel like it or don't have the time, so be it; I won't stress about it."

So when I see day after day that I haven't posted anything since October 29th (and it was a short post about the weather of all things...with a picture that filled most of the space), I keep telling myself, "Don't worry about it." I've got plenty of good excuses as to why I haven't posted (I just had a baby a couple of months ago!).

Still, I hate seeing that same posting every time I click on my blog page to read all those other blogs that are listed on my sidebar. It makes me feel like such a slacker. It reminds me off all those journals I started as a kid and teenager and fell short on. I would write furiously in them for a few days in a row, then a week would go by, maybe a month, maybe even years before I would write again. And still, to this day, there are more blank pages than full ones in each one of those books.

And then it spirals into a reminder of all the things I haven't done in life, of all my shortcomings and failures. The dirty laundry in the hamper, the maternity clothes that haven't been packed away, that manuscript that needs to be revised, that e-mail I haven't responded to. It's enough to drive any sane person (and I'm not claiming to be entirely sane!) mad.

Now, though, I can breathe easy for another few days because there's a shiny, new post on my blog.

*Jesse McCartney