It’s me, returning to my blog after a month away, and what a sad month away it’s been. This feeling I’m having right now is exactly what I try to avoid with my whole journaling process. 

In my last blog post, I mentioned an upcoming work trip. Well, leading up to the work trip, during the work trip, and after, I let work get the best of me, gah damn, and I stopped my usual writing and cooking schedule. And, here we are a month later, feeling pretty un-present, wondering where all the time went.

But I’m going to give myself some credit here. Typically, when I start to feel discouraged, I tell myself things like, "Well, I’ll just start the blog later," "I’ll focus on x, y, z right now," and "refocus on the blog again later."

After realigning my chakras, just a saying I like to use for deep thinking and perhaps whipping out pen and paper because I have no clue what a chakra is, I’ve decided: NO. Just because I missed a few weeks doesn’t mean I need to quit. So here I am, picking back up. And, it doesn’t need to be perfect. At the end of the day, all of this is for me; my writing helps me feel present, alive, happy, healthy, and calm. 

So, what has occurred in the past month? One sec, checking my camera roll. 

It appears that I made a lot of blueberry muffins.

And, now that I’ve taken a gander through my camera roll, I feel a bit silly that I’ve let myself feel so down in the dumps these past couple of days. I found many moments that made me really happy over the past month, and I need to remember not to let a bad day fog over all the good days that came before. 

This week, I’m setting the intention to let myself relax and reassess how often I can actually make these posts, in a way that keeps it joyful and not stressful, because this blog ain't about stress. A blog about stress would be a terrible blog. Shoot, is this blog about stress????