Lacklustre

It feels as if my blogging has been somewhat lacklustre recently. It lacks force, brilliance or vitality (a perfect dictionary definition of lacklustre)! I have been plodding along hoping that things might improve on their own, but now I fear that this may not be so.

Several issues are to blame for my lack of enthusiasm and drive in the blogging world. Firstly, I am now a full-time Mummy. Many bloggers are, I know. But probably most of them are not being a mum and studying. I started study again this week. Only a 50% load this year, which I must say feels incredible! I have no practicums this year. This semester I have only 2 papers. That's 4 assignments and 2 exams. Wow. Compare that to the 6 papers I had last year, and the trouble I had just working out if anything was due this week, and you can understand why I feel so much happier now.

It was a hard decision to make, as we were living day by day with the help of my student allowance. This decision has meant further upheaval which has also impacted on my desire to blog. Boyo is looking for full time work. Now that doesn't sound so bad, does it? The thing is that he has been looking right around New Zealand and even Australia. The thought of moving again is somewhat daunting. I have not felt as 'at home' in a community as I do now since I was a young child growing up in Wellington. So obviously I don't want to leave. I don't want to leave the close contact we have with both sets of parents, the amazing lifestyle of being right next to a beautiful walkway, with a private backyard, my parents garden to potter in, and an absolutely incredible church that has literally opened it's collective arms to us. Yeah, so it has been a bit hard. I think the hardest thing is not knowing what is going to happen. And not having some inclination as to what we 'should' be doing. When we moved to Australia, and then back again, I felt that God spoke to me very strongly. At present, I have a few 'gut' feelings, but nothing concrete to go on. So we've been following pretty much every conceivable opportunity we can think of, and then some. With Boyo being out of his industry for the past 18months, due to the recession and then helping me with study/baby/surviving life, it's hard for him to get back in. We're still unsure whether he will or will head off in another direction instead. So anyway, all the unsettledness has affected my desire to write. In saying all this, the fact that I am now writing about is is a good indication that I have worked through some of the issues and am feeling a bit better about things overall. Still don't know what will come next, but I am feeling more optimistic, less panicked, and more trusting that my Guide has not gone on holiday but will be working away helping us out!

I am also finding that I just don't have the brain space I need to write really good stuff. I mean, I can post pictures of the garden and little bits and bobs here and there, but I'm not getting to the nitty gritty stuff that I really want to talk about...I just don't get enough concentrated time to think it through and formulate my thoughts, let alone manage to write it all down. This blogging thing can absorb a huge amount of time, I am finding, and huge amounts of time are simply something I do not currently possess. At all. If I blog, the washing doesn't get folded (like now) or the baby ends up grizzling because I have forgotten all about him, or my study gets behind. You get the idea.

So, what I have concluded is that maybe I need to rethink what blogging is all about for the next few years. I started this blog before I had a baby. And I'd been wanting to do it for a few years before finally getting started. I really had no concrete aims for the blog, so much of my disappointment has been from unconscious ideas about what a good blog should or should not be for me. Time to think more clearly about it, and decide on some boundaries, expectations, and hopes. So now I just have to find a space to do that in! Watch this space...


Amy

Thursday, 10th February, 2011