Avoiding the Inevitable

It's been at least 3 months (and probably closer to 5 or 6) since I've been able to remain consistently current on blog entries.  During that stretch, it has occurred to me on more than one occasion that maybe it's time to bid my beloved online journal goodbye.  After all, it's a blog. With the advent of Facebook, Twitter, and things of the like; the family blog has swiftly become the 8-track of social media (and everyone under 30 is going, what's an 8-track?).  I mean, it has been over 6 years, 500 entries, 3 child births, 4 funerals, 3 cities, 2 states, a foster child, and countless number of gray hairs since our first blog entry.  Granted, I'm usually one to bet on my own perseverance, but I think I've shocked my own self with the longevity of this endeavor.

But here we are, over six weeks between entries and I've since had countless conversations in my head about the purpose of the blog, and how long to avoid the inevitable.  We went from the inaugural two entries per week (wow... 2007) to a "one or two entries per week" format... to  consecutive weeks of silence, to finally missing a full month altogether (February 2013).   What happened? Well, over that time,  our family has evolved and our lives have simply morphed from one stage to the next; and suddenly I find myself thinking, "how in the world did I ever have time to write so much back then?" ...  It seems that I used to have an absurd amount of quiet time to write and casually flip through and edit photos. The good ol' days (sigh).  Now the only quiet time that I get is during the drive from home to work, and back again... and even that little window of solitude has been invaded by a certain 4 year old who has been going to work with daddy every day for the past two weeks due to behavior problems at home... but, that's a whole different blog entry that will never see the light of day... which brings us full circle to my initial question.  Is it time to say goodbye?

Gosh, it would be sad to end the blog, but suddenly life is simply happening at a pace that doesn't afford me the luxury of written reflection (and no, neither a Facebook status update nor a 140 character tweet about what you had for breakfast qualify as a written reflection).  The irony is, the busier life gets, the more important a journal becomes... because it's that very busyness that we get lost in.  Memories get lost, and appreciation for the moment (every moment) falls by the wayside as we lose scope of the forest amidst the trees.  The finer details of life that you swear you won't forget... those little things each day that seemingly make it all worthwhile... I've already learned that almost all of them become little more than vague notions and forgotten footnotes as we flip from one day to the next on the calendar.  So there's your catch 22:  When we have "plenty of time to write", we probably have less to write about than we care to admit... and on the other hand, when our lives are bursting at the seams to where time for reflection feels like an impossibility, it's that very fullness of life that cries for a blog and demands (begs) to be documented so that every morsel can be savored at the next intermission.

And so, if you haven't figured it out already, I've made my decision: We're going to keep trucking along... or biking along... or crawling at a snail's pace from one entry to the next...  Because no matter the frequency, the truth is that every time I open it, the blog brings me back to basics.  It brings me back to the whys, the whats, and the whens that make every second of the journey worthwhile.   In the back of my mind, the goal is to (someday) find a way to print, bind, and pass on these memories to those evil little children precious tiny humans for which this will all be vague memories, at best... and I'm probably delusional in the extent to which I think they'd actually be interested in reading these accounts... but hey, I've never heard anyone say that they wish they spent LESS time documenting their lives or the lives of their children... as long as that documentation doesn't get in the way of the experience itself.  So break out the compressed air, blow the dust off the keyboard, and let's get cracking on this blog backlog.