Last updated on June 13, 2021
Little pieces of wisdom and small treasures, archived neatly beside utterly nonsense and total flops. Some days I am brilliant, just to disappoint the next day. Yep, that’s me. A living contradiction, a breathing oxymoron. I never looked in my blogging archive before. Did I write all of this?
Looking into The Happy Quitter’s archive for the first time was quite an eye-opener. Months, after months, year after year? Goodness! I almost feel the need to apologize, but to whom? The internet or the readers, maybe my keyboard, which gets hammered on a daily basis.
I was searching for a specific post, and by doing so came across some other writing treasures I had long-forgotten about. Treasures for me, perhaps garbage for the next person. Still, don’t they deserve to be remembered?
Right about the same time when I thought about all the long forgotten posts, I decided to put myself in a COMPUTER TIMEOUT -just like every year. For one month, I will limit myself to one hour a day for the news, my work emails, quotes, and invoices. A step away from the virtual world because an inner voice tells me to do so.
Normally, I just say good-bye on my blog, and I disappear, but not so this year. The one hour will include reading interesting blog posts, and interacting with readers and writers, through comments, which, of course, will leave me with absolutely no time to come up with more utter nonsense, or wisdom for my own blog.
So today, in my temporary infinite wisdom, I decided to repost some of the old treasures during my computer break. Brilliant idea! I have my smart moments now and then.
Re-blogging myself. That’s genius! Since I don’t particularly care for re-blogs, now I can be mad with…myself!
I am still not sure about the importance of my blog to me, and the rest of this world. Sometimes I want to put the first year of THE HAPPY QUITTER in a book-form, like a handbook of how joyful and puzzling quitting smoking can be. Other days I shrug it off.
“My blog is a collection of answers people don’t want to hear to questions they didn’t ask.”
I think I take blogging breaks to lean back and find out if I still feel the NEED to share. I don’t want to blog for numbers or for LIKES. I want to continue to write about whatever comes to my mind -even though it might upset a few readers. I want to continue to feel joy when I think about a new post. I don’t ever want to have the feeling that I have to write to keep my blog going.
I also want to know that I still function very well without all the distractions coming from the internet, and a phone that has the possibility to be smarter than me, if I would let it.
Perhaps my blogging breaks are the last rebellious act I can think of before I will completely surrender to a life that’s manipulated by modern technology.
I want to stay authentic for as long as I can!
Enjoy your break. I should clean house with some of my old posts. I have been here for a long time though…I started intermittently posting in 2013. I really should get rid of some of those older posts. I look forward to your reblogs!
I really feel that I can relate to much of what you say here. I have never intentionally set my blog aside, but on at least three separate occasions life has challenged me so much that I just couldn’t “speak” and I realized I couldn’t keep it up. But I always come back, not as much for what I think I have to say, but because in my absence I find myself thinking of other bloggers and wondering if they are doing well. It’s an interesting little community! I think we can come and go as we need to, but I agree with you that it’s not about stats or even garnering much attention. Keep being you, Bridget. Blogs are about self-expression, and we absolutely never know if what we have to say means anything to another person, but every now and then we know we’ve connected with someone, and that’s a really good moment! 🙂
I couldn’t agree with you more. I have a great connection with a handful of very special bloggers, which I would miss terribly. I know I was worried about you when you didn’t ‘show up’ as usual.
It is indeed an interesting medium. I just need to make sure I don’t become one of the people who have their face in a screen at all time.
We all have that struggle. Some of us, like you, have the need and the ability to disconnect. As for me, I’m still trying to reach the point where I start by expressing myself on my blog and having others comment! Meanwhile, I know I will enjoy and probably learn from your past posts as I’m sure there will be many from the time before I started following and from the time when it appeared to me you’d shut me out! Enjoy your break but please come back!
Not so sure if I might post ‘learning material’ but I will try. 🙂
Of course I will come back, I just need to make sure the internet has not completely swallowed me -yet.
Do your own thing Bridget!
It’s kinda like a birth defect 🙂
It is amazing what we find when we look at our earlier posts 🙂
Enjoy you mini break
I will, thank you.
Interesting idea, your break. Do you set a timer for your one hour?
Yes, I have to or I get lost in translations 🙂