I’ve been feeling incredibly overwhelmed the past few days. I’m working considerably more this semester and am still in the process of adjusting to the new schedule. I came about this close to just saying “Screw it” to my blog this week, but here we are, Sunday afternoon. Amalie’s taking a nap, and I have two stacks of papers to grade, but I just couldn’t, couldn’t, couldn’t stay away.

I guess the truth is, blogging is linked in my mind with my writing self, that is, the side of myself that pretty much lives to write. That side of myself has been getting pushed more and more to the back burner lately, with my mommy self, my wifey self, my teachy self, and my watching episodes of Mad Men on Netflix and playing Super Mario Land 3D selves screaming for attention.

I’ve been blogging for several years now, almost as long as I’ve been taking writing really seriously. I started blogging in grad school, shortly after I started developing a strong work ethic as a writer and shortly before I started getting published. I know it isn’t BECAUSE of the blog that I became a real writer and not a would-be writer, like I used to be, but the two things feel very inextricable in my mind. They are woven together and can’t be separated. If I stop blogging, it’s like a statement to myself—I’m no longer willing to do the work to be a writer.

And the truth is, blogging about writing has helped me learn and grow as a writer. Part of the reason why I write to begin with is because writing is my way of thinking about and understanding the world. I can’t always come to terms with things, can’t always decide how I feel about them, until I write about them. Fiction allows me to climb inside the minds of people who I don’t understand and try to see the world from their perspectives. I come out on the other end a more empathetic, more forgiving person.

The same is true, for writing issues, of my blog. I blog about writing topics and obstacles I come up against in my writing life largely as a way of understanding them, deciding where I stand on them, and learning how to deal with and overcome them. I know bloggers get a lot of flak from non-bloggers as being self-indulgent, unoriginal, and wasting time talking about writing rather than actually writing (although writing a blog is still writing, right? Don’t we teach our students that they should take free-writes seriously because any time spent writing is valuable, is still practice?), but I’m not afraid to admit that blogging is really important to me.

So I’m blogging today as a sort of statement to my writing self, I guess. I still care about you. I do! I’ve got to get some papers graded, and my baby will be up soon, but I’ll check back in with you soon, I promise. You’re still an important part of who I am.