Where do I even begin?

I don’t want to come on here and go- oh look I’m back (again)! Because I feel like that’s fake…that’s wrong…I’ve done that so many times before. The truth is, when life picks up this tends to be the first thing that falls off. It’s not intentional, just a fact of life at this point unfortunately. 

And then I always find myself wanting to find a balance- I want to share all the things, but I don’t want to talk about things or have them go the wrong way. Which is funny because in “the real world” I tend to have some pretty vocal opinions and thoughts. But the internet is such a fickle place- you can’t read intention, you can’t read facial expressions, you can’t read my tone, you just read my words and interpret them through your own lens of life. 

And then the new year came. And with this new year we will be moving, and life will be in a bit of an upheaval for a time. And I also haven’t been feeling very “new year hoorah” this new year. Maybe it’s because much of 2024 and 2025 are transient (and I don’t mean that in the strictest sense, more so in the sense that a lot of it is up in the air and we’re just rolling with life). 

And then I read all of that back and I just think…why? What’s the point of that? It all sounds so melodramatic and unnecessary. The life of an overthinker, over analyzer. 

Oh, and I’m doing all of this while trying to backup all my tens of thousands of photos on my computer so I can add more thousands of photos so I can clear up space and catch up on life on here… The little photo app keeps popping up errors of duplicates and I keep pressing ok and trying to type while the boys run amok on the last two days of Holiday Break…I mean if this doesn’t describe my life at the present- well the massive run on sentence of this paragraph sure will. 

So, what am I actually saying? What is actually going through my head? That’s a good question. 

I want to come back- slowly, tentatively, intentionally. I want to start sharing more of my “real world” thoughts and opinions. I want to share more of what I am doing (as it’s been a lot). I want to share more of what I’m seeing, what my thoughts are on that, where I fall in the status quo. 

Ultimately, I want to start laying the online groundwork of what I’ve been doing in the “real world”. I don’t really know why, but I feel like I can do MORE a lot of times and I want to do MORE and so I’m going to try. I want to share fluff, talk nonsense, talk pop culture, but I also want to talk about real issues, about ****hides**** political issues ****she said it****, about issues military families can face, about issues that occur in other countries. I want to talk books, I want to talk travel, I want to talk LIFE. 

I want to talk about my favorite reads of the month or year, about putting together a galantines basket, hosting a book club, hosting an event, and also about what I experience volunteering with the USO, what I see for struggles in our community, about how oppression occurs throughout the world (and isn’t limited to the groups we loudly talk about), about how hypocritical politics has become. All the facets of LIFE. 

So, here I am going to go- dipping my toe in. Please bear with me as I figure out blogging and posting again. And- as always, if you want to see day to day or real time or other fun things, you can follow me on IG, TikTok (for now), Facebook, Goodreads (I’m on some other book apps if you’d like to follow me there I can share those too), and I’m sure I’ll join whatever will replace TikTok if the inevitable does in fact happen. 

Oh look- my photos from 2016 have exported to my portable hard drive (yes that’s how long it’s been). Off I go back to the photo world.