Redefining balance

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I remember a time in the not-so-distant past when I considered myself a blogger. Now my blog is but a memory of those days, and my Blogger dashboard is littered with nearly-finished and some just-started drafts that I've been writing for the past few months. For some reason I haven't been able to get from draft to publish. Perhaps it's because I'm out of the habit of writing or simply because I haven't been into it. Lately, I've felt the need to unwind with activities that would get me out of my head; writing, for me, even when penning fiction, does just the opposite. In the past few weeks, I've been trying to push myself to blogging productivity, since that was one of the activities I wanted to better balance this year, but it just wasn't clicking, and then I read this in my blog reader last night:

If you’re a lapsed writer, before you even start exploring writing again or “getting more productive,” you’ve got to take a little action to give yourself a fresh start.  And that action is the simple act of forgiving yourself for the way things have been.     ~ Marla Beck

And it spoke to me, in relation not only to my lack of writing, but also to my goal of practicing balance.

For me, balance no longer means finding time to do everything I "need" or want to do; balance means achieving a healthy mix of work and play, productivity and relaxation to maintain a happy me. The things that make me happy - how I play and relax - aren't always consistent. While blogging/writing was at one time an outlet that created much reward and satisfaction, recently the blank computer screen has been less attractive than the stack of books on my shelf, the piles of photos that have yet to be scrapped, the movies in my Netflix queue, and the "pinned" recipes that remained untested. At first I felt guilty that writing had been pushed to the back of my heart, but then I both accepted and embraced it, enjoying the activities that made me most happy at the time. As a result, I've read some great books, watched more movies in the past few months than I usually do in an entire year, and even made a few great projects... all of which I'm now finally ready to write about here.

So what is the ultimate take-away for me six months into this "year of balance"? It's that balance means different things at different times; that what makes me happy today might not make me happy tomorrow - and that's O. KAY; that trying to force myself to continue a hobby - whether that be blogging or scrapbooking - when I'm not feeling it can make the hobby even less desirable; that there is great benefit in listening to myself and giving myself both the space and permission to do what my brain and body need at the time.

Thus, this is me accepting the way things have been, forgiving myself for diverging from my original path, and promising to continue being honest with myself about my needs. And this is me finally hitting the "publish" button.