Greetings and salutations, blog folks! It has been a while since I’ve been actively blogging – sorry about that. It’s an unfortunate situation lately: I’ve lacked the time and motivation to do a lot of things. I can try to blame it on anxiety or depression, but the truth is I’ve been a bit lazy. And in some ways, 2016 has been a really frustrating year. It’s hard to get up the energy to be bubbly and excited about books when the entire world seems to be falling down the toilet (that may sound harsh, but it sure felt that way at times).

But here we are, at a new year, on an arbitrary day that humans have chosen to make a fresh start. It’s funny how the simple change of a calendar day can make people feel like everything is going to be different. In some ways, it can. New Year’s resolutions can be a motivation to make changes in your life for the better, although we all know how often those are kept throughout the year, especially for me. Typically, January 1st comes and there is a burst of energy and ideas about how to make this new year the best one yet!! . . . which usually lasts about a week, after which you slide back into the same old rut.

Man, this post just got depressing!

And that’s okay. I think part of why I stopped blogging was because I was finding it hard to think of uplifting/funny/exciting/silly things to talk about. I fell back into my bookish memes, because those are easy to write and have been a large part of this blog, but even those took a lot of effort to churn out. Which is why I stopped.

And when you think about it, that’s kind of dumb. This blog is my little corner of the Internet, and if I don’t want to be uplifting/funny/excited/silly, then I shouldn’t feel pressured into trying. I am allowed to be serious. I am allowed to be depressing, although I try not to make those posts too often. I assume that people don’t really want to read that sort of thing, but that’s not always true. I read depressing stuff all the time. Sometimes it’s comforting to know that there are other people who feel the same way you do, who are working through it, or who have made it to the other side.

So 2017. Anyone who knows me knows that I love making lists and love making goals, even if my cynical side knows that I’m not particularly good at keeping them. That’s never stopped me before and certainly won’t stop me now! My first goal will be to jump start this blog back up by posting every day for the month of January. That’s right. Every. Day. I got the idea from Wil Wheaton’s blog, where he did this for the month of December. It was a way to break out of a rut, to give himself permission to post anything he wanted, to free up his blogging juices, or as he put it, to “get past the internal gatekeeper slash critic who prevents me from using the one space on the Internet that is entirely mine.”

I like that. A lot. This is my blog. It doesn’t have to conform to anyone else’s expectations or be predictable, although it will still do both of those things from time to time. There have been several times I have wanted to talk about subjects that I didn’t think I would feel comfortable blogging about, but you know what? Why not! I mainly talk about books, but if I enter one of those horrid reading slumps, there’s no reason why I can’t blog about other things. I have from time to time, although very infrequently.

But yes, that is my first goal for 2017 – to blog every day, no matter how big, no matter how small. Free up the blog to free up my mind. May heaven help us all.

Just kidding.

I’m looking forward to it.

*sweeps off the front porch*

*pours a few glasses of lemonade*

Welcome to my little corner of the Internet. Make yourself comfortable and enjoy your stay.

Categories: Blog Every Day January, Drabbles

Tags: goals, new years