My dearest readers, on Thursday I turned to you for help regarding how to handle balancing my chronic health problems with my desire to keep abreast of the comments Chronically Vintage receives. I’ll openly admit, I was feeling rather overwhelmed as I composed that post. A sleepless night the day before spent mulling this problem over constantly in my mind had really indicated to me that this was an issue I needed to voice and seek assistance with.
{This vintage photo (which comes care of mademoiselle therese’s Flickr stream) of a beautiful maiden languishing on a park bench, clearly looking frazzled and more than a little distraught, is an apt representation of how I feeling on Thursday. After receiving an amazingly kind outpouring of supportive comments and terrific suggestions however, I’m doing a lot better today!}The unbridled support, understanding, and insight and “love”, too, for that is how you all made me feel, so very loved!) that fill the more the 30 comments which poured in has floored – and touched – me greatly. I truly feel like the words “thank you” fail to express how grateful I am to everyone who shared their thoughts regarding this matter with me. I took all of your words to heart, absorbing the wisdom and guidance you bestowed upon me.
Over the past couple of days I’ve been doing a lot of soul searching, deep thought and contemplation. These things paired with your comments have truly helped me to realize that perhaps I wasn’t looking at the bigger picture of my blog as a whole, but rather focusing on the one aspect that was troubling me the most (trying to figure out how to keep up with comments).
Amidst an emotional day on Friday, it dawned on me that I part of the reason why the comment issue was troubling me so deeply was because it had come to represent a greater feeling of failure in terms of being able to stay up-to-date with many, many aspects of my life (both on and off line) that I’ve been experiencing for years now as a direct result of my medical conditions affecting so many elements of my world.
Continually feeling as though I stumbled three (or thirty!) steps backwards for every one step I took forward had started to weigh heavily on my mind and soul.
While I wouldn’t call myself a “Type A”, I’ve always been a bit of an overachiever and a major workaholic, so just about no matter how far I fell behind in terms of everything I needed to get done, I just kept plugging away ceaselessly, at times spreading myself too way thin. Sure, I’d scaled back in some places (for example, I used to be active on several different online forums, yet these days I almost never post on forums, much as I wish I was able to), but in areas others things had only gotten more harried.
Aside from learning to cut myself more slack (a nearly foreign concept to my mind) and accepting that sometimes I have limitations due to my health, I’ve also realized that periodically I need to take breaks away from certain online activities so that I can put my energies into other ones instead.
This way, I hope, I will feel less like I’m trying to divide myself in ten, twenty, etc different directions at once and more like I can focus on the really key things that need my attention at a given moment the moment. To that extent,
I’ve decided to take an immensely small blogging breaking for the next few days.I cannot stress enough that I am not in any way stepping back from Chronically Vintage – just taking a teeny-tiny break. This blog is a joy and sanctuary for me, I love it (and all of you!) dearly, but want to ensure I’m able to give it my very best by not being crazily inundated by other online activities that I feel I need to tend to as well (for example, at the moment I’ve got a massive back load of emails I feel I must get through, especially those that are still outstanding from 2009).
Not only do I have a lot of overdue things to attend to on the computer, but also in my home and personal life, and I plan on getting some of those done over the coming week, too (however, I will try my best not to pull a “typical Jess” and overexert myself until I cause one or more of my conditions to flare-up). I’m going to tentatively take the coming week off from blogging. At this point in time, I’m planning to jump right back into writing new Chronically Vintage posts next Saturday (the 13th).
In the future, from time-to-time, when I start to feel heavily overwhelmed (by the volume of activities that I feel I’ve failed to keep up with at a level I’m happy with), I will grant myself permission to take small blogging breaks again. It might sound odd, but in nearly all facets of my life, I’ve really never learned how to “cut myself a break”. I hope that this week I will better learn how to do so.
Regarding how to approach keeping up my the wonderful comments that I receive and visiting your own splendid sites, I’m going to take the advice many of you offered to me and just do the best that I can, accepting that some days I may not be able to visit as many other blogs as I’d ideally like to. Instead of worrying about not being able to visit absolutely everyone (and seeing this as a failure), I will try to look at those I am to visit as an accomplishment in its own right.
Sincerely, with all of my heart, thank you very much to everyone who showered me with unparalleled kindness and understanding. Your friendship and support have helped me in so many ways! I feel that your comments paired with a pint sized blogging break (during which time I will try to catch-up on as many things as I reasonably can), will really prove to be just the ticket I need when it comes to finding a deeper sense of long-term online tranquility.
May peace, joy and inspiration be with you all in the coming week, sweetest friends!
