I did it!  Today is the last day of NaBloPoMo, and I managed to blog every single day in November.  Day 30 is upon us, and my final theme is … Books.  Wait, what?  What on earth inspired me to pick something so anticlimactic after such a momentous (for me, probably not for you) month?  Well, what I was thinking was, dreaming up thirty different themes is hard, and November 30th is Lucy Maud Montgomery’s birthday.  So I’ll just write about books on that day. 

How weird is it that I: a) ever knew Lucy Maud Montgomery’s birthday, and b) still remember it to this day?  What important, life-saving information am I forgetting because I’m using up so much crucial brain space on menial LMM trivia?  Clearly I had a slight Anne of Green Gables obsession in my adolescence.

If you’re dying to know about me and books, I’m kind of a David Baldacci nerd (#basic).  But, I don’t intend to write any more on the subject today, because I’d rather use the rest of this post to reflect a bit on what it was like to blog every day over the past month.

So how did it feel? Honestly, it felt really good.  If you haven’t already guessed from the flavor of my writing and my own outright admissions, I struggle with anxiety.  It’s not crippling, but it is a significant part of my daily life.  When we first moved to upstate New York and I became a stay-at-home-mom, my anxiety surged in response to all of the unknowns.  But having this blog and forcing myself to write every day over the last month has strangely calmed my nerves.  I’ve been much happier, more organized, and more patient with my children.

I guess you could say frequent blogging has been an anxiolytic for me.  It’s forced me to reign in and synthesize some of the silly parenting thoughts bouncing around inside my head.  It’s allowed me to reflect on and put words to some deep-seated issues with certain family relationships.  It’s given me a platform to bitch about petty stuff and then move on, when I would otherwise be obsessing.

While it was hard to have “homework” every single day, it was alternatively nice to have a bit more purpose beyond mom-ing my kids and keeping house.  That’s not to say that I don’t think both of those things are incredibly important and fulfilling in their own way.  But neither is something that I do for me.  It felt nice to take care of myself and pursue my own interests with my blog this past month.

So all to say, I think I’ll keep going with this whole blogging thing.  But probably not every single day.  Because mommy needs to catch up on her shows.

Until next time,

Vee