In Conclusion, Don't Worry About It

Hey, it's been a while!

Like, 56 days to be exact. This year I was inspired by Shonda Rhimes and decided that I should be writing more. I haven't been doing much of that lately (at least not the kind of writing that I find fun. There have been several cover letters).

I didn't purposely stop blogging, but rather I was busy and blogging fell through the cracks. At first I didn't write anything for a day or two. Then that turned into a week or two. I was busy with things like my last finals week and graduation, which turned into being busy with things like moving and vacation.

After packing up two years worth of useful and useless stuff that I had accumulated in my college house and moving it into a storage unit, I went hiking in Utah for a lot of days. Then my car broke down on my way back from Utah and I was stranded in Yankton, South Dakota for a day while it got fixed. Then I moved into a hotel. Spoiler: it's not as fun as The Suite Life of Zack and Cody made it seem.

Since then, I have almost entirely finished the yearbook (!!!). I applied for a few jobs, and then a few more, and then approximately 57 more and interviewed for the one I wanted least.

There's been an episode or two of Grey's Anatomy here and there, too. It's not that I was so busy that I couldn't have blogged during any of those times. It just... didn't feel right. Blogging quickly turned into something I put off because, for whatever reason, it seemed to overwhelming. It wasn't the "Yes!" that it was supposed to be when it started.

When I went hiking, I read Lauren Graham's "In Conclusion, Don't Worry About It", a transcript of a speech she gave at a commencement event. I was sitting on the top of a cliff. It was pretty cool:

When I was hiking I wasn't thinking about blogging. I was mostly thinking of drinking enough water that I stayed hydrated but not drinking so much that I had to pee every fifteen minutes. I was thinking about really, really not wanting to have to poop in a bag (the hike we went on had a strict carry it in carry it out policy). I was thinking about slot canyons and arches and the flies that were biting my legs and the bruise on my left hip from my pack.

But one day Luke and I stuck around camp at the turn around point while his siblings did the final few miles. And so I had some time to read. And it made me think about blogging. I used to worry a lot about what kind of things I should talk about on my blog, and how frequently I should post and if I was using too many GIFs or not enough GIFs. But Lauren Graham made me realize that I shouldn't worry about it. This should be fun. Not work. She writes: 

"Love yourself, and what you're doing, even if you're not yet at the place you hope to land. Let joy be the thing that drives you, and I bet you'll get there faster. Give yourself permission to make mistakes. Those mistakes are as valuable as the triumphs."

I'm going to try to have fun with it again.