A Blogging Break

It’s been easy to put off writing my report from our SSCXWC/Eva Bandman adventure in Louisville over the weekend, since we were driving home all day Monday, and I was catching up on work on Tuesday. However, even with being busy, I really just haven’t felt like writing about it. I’ve been mulling over what to write since Sunday night, and I even came up with a potentially funny “you’re doing it wrong” angle on how my SSCXWC experience went awry when I got so drunk that it was almost like I was taking the race seriously due to the amount of focus required. I actually had a pretty good race at Eva Bandman, where despite feeling physically awful before the race and expecting myself to tank, I had probably my second-best finish since moving up to the elite women’s wave in OVCX. As you can see, though, I was able to fit all of the relevant facts into one short paragraph, so trying to expand it out into something witty and interesting would basically just be self-indulgence.

I will also indulge myself with one last cell phone grade picture of myself racing in a Ninja Turtle costume.

I mean, 90% of the purpose behind this blog is self-indulgence, but for the past few months I’ve begun to feel that it’s switched to a kind of self-indulgence that isn’t beneficial. Over the course of nearly eight years that I’ve been writing, I have gone through many rough patches where I just didn’t post for a while with the old adage of “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all” in mind.

 Then a couple of years ago I began the experiment of being more open about the realities of my mind and life and committing to weekly reports on my progress no matter what. For many months it was a great help to me, because it kept me accountable and taught me how to share and ask for help. It was a way for me to have “someone to talk to” at a time when I had no close relationships with actual humans with whom I could share my feelings.

Through the journey of telling the truth on the Internet, I gained the courage to form relationships with actual humans, and it eventually lead to one very special relationship with one very special human being with whom I can have open and honest conversation about anything on a daily basis. I also got to know a lot of other really great people with whom I didn’t get to spend enough time before I ran off to be with my one very special human being in Pennsylvania. I’ve spent a lot of time of the last few months being sad about the relationships that I couldn’t make last and feeling like it was because I wasn’t likeable/memorable/worthwhile enough.

So that is when I started struggling with honesty vs. just plain negativity in my writing. I know that it’s just my crazy brain telling me that nobody cares what is going on with me, anyway, but I’ve realized that blogging and social media are really exacerbating those negative feelings right now. Then it becomes self-fulfilling prophecy of those negative feelings turning me into a whiny, unlikeable person from whom no one wants to hear any updates.

That is why I’ve decided to take a break from my blog for a while, stop dwelling on the past, and put my energy towards building real-life positive relationships to fill in the space around the life that I’m building with my very special human being relationship. Maybe in a few months I’ll feel like challenging myself with crafting funny reports about my racing experiences, or I’ll even figure out how to use my enjoyment of the writing process towards some less self-indulgent topic. For now, though, I will say see you later, and thanks for reading!