welcome back kotter

So.

It's July, the beginning of July, steamy hot sweaty heavy summer. The last time I was a regular blogger, it was sharp chilly early spring. I lived in a tiny little fake-townhouse and arranged my life around my cats; I traveled and drank a lot and did everything I could to distract myself from the crushing desperation that was imprisonment in the wrong job.

In the past few months I quit my job, bought a house, brought home a dog, and switched to a Mac. I am not sure which of these things is this most momentous life change.

Also, I am tan now. It is from the dog walking. Of course by tan I mean sort of a darker shade of pale but you understand, this is still a major life change.

The point is, a different person than I, a more engaged person, a less lazy person perhaps, would have taken all these life changes as an opportunity. She would have chronicled these changes, blogged regularly, let the world in on the perspective of an American girl in flux. She would have kept friends and family in the loop and not dropped off the face of the planet. And maybe she would have even had a little writing to show for it all.

Clearly, I am not that person.

Here's the thing. I was blogging at work, mostly. I didn't have that much else to do. And I can't blog at work anymore, because I'm working. I might be shaving tangled mats off of a dog's face so he can see, or consoling a distraught volunteer about a dog we just couldn't rehabilitate, or herding a very confused sheep into a dog kennel padded with straw (to use last Friday as an example).

Sometimes I blogged at home, sitting in front of the tv. I don't do that anymore, because I am not sitting in front of the tv. I might be walking the dog down to the frozen custard shop for mint chocolate custard and puppy pops, or watering my plants in the backyard, or pushing a dust mop endlessly around my floors, or trying to figure out how to get my windows-formatted iPod to work with my new Mac without losing all my songs, or thinking about dinner and deciding between farmers' market foccacia and sweet corn or one of the adorable cafes down the street.

So I'm at a crossroads here. Part of me wants to keep (start again) blogging--I like having an outlet when I want to share something funny or upsetting or confusing, I like keeping in touch with minimal effort, I like keeping my mind active and my communication skills sharp (ish). But the other part of me is slightly lazy and constantly overwhelmed with work and stress and keeping house and staying in touch. That's the part that can't be bothered to open up the computer and sit down to blog. That's the part of me harboring the sneaking suspicion that my passive, accidental choice to stop blogging was the right choice after all. That maybe it's less important to talk about life changes and more important to live life changes. That while it's nice to ponder and muse and share thoughts, I'm better off experiencing and feeling and enjoying.

Also, you can't get a tan from sitting in front of a Mac.