Me & Will after the 5th grade poetry reading. Aren't my teeth straight? Isn't Will a goofball?
I feel like I haven't been a good steward of this blog lately, stewardship being a theme of this household right now, for reasons I may or may not go into today, but probably will later. Now, the fact is, everything has its season, and it simply may not be the season for blogging. I have taught quite a bit this spring, and maybe this is a teaching season, not a blogging season.
This blog is a repository for almost seven years of my domestic life, and I want to continue with it. The other day I was feeling sort of sad because I hadn't spent enough time documenting Jack and Will's lives, and then suddenly occurred to me: I had documented them here! I read over some entries from back in the day and discovered things I'd completely forgotten about, like the time Will asked what Travis was going to be when he grew up. I'm so glad I wrote that down.
I keep a journal, intensively at times, other times (like now) more sporadically, but unless one of the boys is in some sort of crisis, mostly the journal is about me and my feelings. I use the journal to vent and obsess and release anxiety. So it's here, on this blog, that I document. I'm not much of a photographer--I lack talent and don't have much desire to take pictures, which I realize is odd in this age of the phone camera--but writing here has forced me to take pictures for illustration purposes, and I'm glad for that. It's been lovely especially, to see how our backyard garden has developed and changed over the years.
Does this mean I'll be blogging more? I don't know. Maybe. Maybe later. I think if I remember that years from now I'll want to remember, I'll do a better job. We shall see.
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A quilting friend of mine and I are currently holding each other accountable for tracking our calories and steps every day. We've been doing this for over a week, and I've lost three pounds (she's lost four, but she's taller, which I think matters somehow). We each have goals we share in our daily emails; yesterday, Kristin added she wanted to quilt for fifteen minutes a day, and I added that to my goal list, too. I'm going to add one more goal, which is spot clean for fifteen minutes a day. In a few weeks, we're having a big party for my 50th birthday, and every day I've focused on a very small area of the house to clean. It keeps me from feeling overwhelmed.
I find the psychology here interesting. If I fail to record what I eat, then not only do I let myself down, I sort of let Kristin down, too. I feel responsible for doing what I said I'll do, because I think it will help her do what she said she'll do.
Do you have an accountability pact with someone? What do you want to be held accountable for in your life?
