Mary Hopper

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and i'm back.

IMG_4600I've had all these ambitions to sit down and write my goals and "resolutions" for the new year...I've even picked a word for the year and have been wanting to gather my thoughts around that too (maybe coming soon?!?). And here we are, January 4th, 11th, and I just haven't gotten around to doing it.

Over the holidays, I decided to take a break from blogging. I was feeling pressure (that was only coming from myself) to blog so many days/week, follow a blog "schedule" and share certain things on my blog.

Until last March, the blog was sporadic, and I really only posted what I wanted, when I wanted. I didn't really have that many readers either, and I was okay with that.

After we lost David, I started writing about my feelings, thoughts, and struggles, and more people started reading and connecting to the things I was writing about. As I wrote through my grief, I compiled more and more drafts of things I wanted to share with others.  I was feeling overwhelmed by all those half written blog posts, so to get a little more organized I made a blog schedule and started scheduling posts, sometimes weeks in advance.  For awhile, I thought that was pretty awesome, but in true Type A fashion, I took it too far, and started feeling the pressure.

I don't really know what this blog is, in fact, I'm not sure I have known since I started it. And I'm constantly trying to define it, asking myself lots of questions:

Do I want to get rid of the comments? Could I make money from this little hobby of mine? How do I get more readers? Do I want more readers? Should I try to "brand" it? Do I need a logo? Create a following? Use social media to promote it?

But I think that's the point of something like this. There doesn't have to be a definition, and why do I have to have an answer to those questions?  It doesn't have to fit into the "mold" of what I think a "blog" should be, or what I see my peers doing. It's my little space or corner of the internet, and it can be whatever I want it to be.

So the moral of this post is just that, there is no moral. I took a longer break from posting than I intended, but that's ok. There are no rules. There are no guidelines. It's just me, my computer, the thoughts that come from my mind out into the tips of my fingers, that little blue publish button, and whoever might stumble into this space of mine here on the world wide web.

Thanks for reading.

Thanks for supporting me.

And thanks for letting me be me.