This was the first photo I ever blogged, on December 31, 2009.  I suppose I started blogging at work a few years before that, but it was the same photo that I started with.  I don’t consider myself visually-oriented.  If you’ve seen me dress, you’d agree, but I generally give attention to my blog photos because I feel they oftentimes tell the story better than I can in words.

I’ve been thinking about putting my blog on hiatus for a few months.  I don’t know that I will but it’s fair to say I haven’t been putting much thought into my blog stories lately, and that makes me a bit sad.  It used to be I would curate my thoughts all week before finally capturing the story into words over the weekend.  Even some of my longer posts only take me five or ten minutes to write because I’ve already written the stories in my head.

I should perhaps reword my statement above and say I haven’t been putting stories into my thoughts lately, because that’s how I think.  I wouldn’t say I’m a vocal storyteller.  I lean towards laconic.  But my pattern of thinking is to structure free thoughts into stories.  I imagine I have the same thoughts roaming around my mind as anyone else, but I typically form a narrative for them.  It’s clear to me that I should have considered a career in journalism back in college, but then writing is and has been one of the strongest components of my job and career.  From the fifty or so emails I type every day to the PowerPoints I create for Sellers and Customers.  I’ll be putting a few hours into creating a story today for how my company markets security information and event management.  In a PowerPoint form factor of course.

Working on a Sunday segues into why I might pause my blogging.  Not that I don’t have the time, as I already said it takes very little effort for me to actually write.  It’s that my free thoughts are so focused on work right now.  And I haven’t been reading much fiction lately, which has always been my muse.  I suspect I’m going through a boring phase so why write about it?

It is my personal digital platform to leverage for marketing my book, but it’s not like I’m doing anything now in that arena either.  Ellie said she would build me a website for my writing over Christmas break, maybe that will replace my blog.  I stopped blogging back in 2014 for over a month and no one seemed to notice.

I think what I’m struggling with here is that I don’t want to blog if I don’t have anything halfway interesting to share.  It is a good exercise even if I have nothing clever to say.  It helps me to be introspective.  And it’s practice writing.  I have a good friend whose writing I love to read.  Every paragraph is like a Dali painting.  Each sentence a masterpiece in creativity.  Yet he rarely writes because he says it’s a struggle and he doesn’t enjoy the process.

I’m the exact opposite.  I can write about nothing and find it easy.  That might actually be a bad habit that blogging isn’t helping me with.  If you’re a writer, than you are familiar with the strong attitudes authors have toward blogging.  They either say it’s a good exercise and serves as a marketing platform, or they despise it as cheapening the medium.  I’m asking myself that question now.  I’m wondering if it’s in my interest to continue or to take a break.  We’ll see.