The night after I wrote my last blog post I dreamt that I died.
I was haunted by the visions of my death-bed scene all that weekend. I couldn't shake the feelings and conversations and finality.
Eventually, when I just couldn't let it go, I called my mum for an explanation and some reassurance, and hopefully no ridicule. You see I am the parent who finds the long, painfully detailed descriptions of my kids' dreams terribly tedious. More than once I have uttered the word riveting in a sarcastic tone when they have caught me somewhere and begun to share a minute by minute play-back of their last 10 hours in slumberland. Nine times out of ten it doesn't deter them and I am treated to every single gory detail and held captive until they are done; elephants and nakedness and school-yards and teeth and everything else their precious subconscious selves have thrown at them while they were slumbering.
So as you can imagine I didn't take my decision to call my mum, our family's chief dream interpreter, lightly.
But eventually I did.
Once we got over the riveting bit and I filled her in on all the death-bed details, she got down to business. 'A dream about a death is really about the end of something and the rebirth of something else' she told me. In this case she thought it was most probably my blog. And although this feels obvious now, it felt like such a relief at the time not to have to worry that it was any sort of premonition.
The end of something tho - was it really the end?
When I had sat down on that last Friday to write my blog I had had no idea that I was about to take a break from it. I knew that there were problems, I knew that it had started to feel like more of a responsibility than a joy, and I knew that that one woman's demand of my content had rattled me, but still I had expected to post some photos, write some words and press publish. I certainly had not anticipated the death.
But my blog knew what I needed better than I.
10 years had been a great run but the time had come to take a break to ask myself some questions. I felt relief as soon as I admitted it to myself.
In the past month I have not missed my blog at all. I have not missed the pressure to find things to write about, the guilt to read and respond to other people's blogs, the small but growing fear that my words could and might be judged and used against me, and I have not missed the time it takes to put it all together - the words and the photos.
Those precious blogging hours.
As a work from home/on the farm mother, there was so often a measure of guilt involved as I sat at my computer writing my blog on a Friday while the to-do list exploded around me. But it was a decision we had made, and although sometimes I did have to do battle with the lists in my head, I guarded those hours carefully and refused to allow them to be compromised.
After I published my last blog, my friend Penelope wrote to me suggesting that I spend my usual blogging hours on some other creative project. At the time I loved that idea, but I soon saw how useful those hours were at the end of the week on the farm or in the house, and then they were quickly gobbled up.
But then as my missed month of May became June I decided that I would blog again on the first Friday. Even if it was just to say goodbye. And then leading up to the Friday I began to notice all the things that I have missed: the community, the creativity, the precious few hours put aside for myself, the record, the writing itself and weirdly - the typing on the computer keys. All the nos I'd been feeling became maybes.
I had hoped to come back here today with some answers about my blogging future. I had hoped to have done some research about a new platform. I had hoped that once I sat down here this morning that the words would flow out of me and decide for me, like they did last time. But unfortunately I've had too many interruptions to give them a chance to make themselves heard.
So my plan is to keep blogging for as long as it brings me joy and as often as I feel like it. I suspect that I won't be here every single week, but I hope that I'll be here at least once a month. Ideally I'd love for it to be more often, but realistically I know that I need to give myself space to only blog when I have a story I want to share.
And I guess it needs to be said that as much as I value your thoughts and opinions, this is my personal blog and I will blog about what I want to blog about when I want to blog about it. If you have a problem with what I choose to write about please unfollow me, if you have strong opinions and thoughts about content please feel free to share them on your own blog.
And finally, I'd like to thank you all from the bottom of my heart for being my community. For reading along over the years, for caring about our family and our way of life, for writing comments and messages, for not scrolling past, and for reading my long posts in a world that favours the quick snippets. You guys are the best!
I don't know when I'll be back here again, but it might be sooner than later as I just bought a new camera and I suspect I'll take lots of photos as I learn to use it. And then we're going to visit Indi soon and travel blogs are always fun to write...
Big thanks also to Miss Jarrah who braved arctic conditions to model for me in my latest knit-in-progress The Sólbein cardigan , hopefully I'll have the sleeves finished and be ready to steek it (cut it down the middle) by the end of the weekend.
And with that I'm outta here! No longer dead but not quite yet reborn.
I hope you have a beautiful weekend my Foxslane friends.
Love,
Kate x
