Time can be complicated to manage. Sometimes it seems like time moves at a snail’s pace. Other times, we feel like our lives are moving faster than we can keep up: weeks, months (even years!) can seem like they go by in the blink of an eye. Regardless of how you move, my least favorite aspect of time is when I tend to lose track of it.
This fall I celebrated six years of blogging. In fact, This is my 500th post on My Brain Is Not Broken. – a number so high I can’t even process it right now (and no, I didn’t mean for this post to be number 500, but here we are!). At some point a few years ago, I started writing two blog posts a week. It felt manageable, I had a lot to write about, and I felt like there was a lot of experience to draw from when writing my posts. But in the last few months I started to feel pressure when it came to my blog and it was a new experience for me.
However, I will be clear; All this pressure was internal. I’m not sure when it happened, but at some point in the last few years I started to feel the pressure I was putting on myself to write two blog posts every week. For all creators, you know what it’s like to post content because you made the commitment and told yourself you would do it. The goals I set for this blog are completely internal and up to me to create, and yet I feel extreme pressure from myself all the time to live up to the expectations I set, even if those expectations aren’t always realistic.
This post is my way of trying to get back into this space feeling a little fresher, a little more rested, and ready to get back to blogging. But to be honest, that’s not entirely true. Sometimes taking a break from something can give us the break we need. But it can also become a source of anxiety and stress if we do not know what our rest is for or how long we are doing it. When I take a break from something, that’s usually what happens.
Unfortunately, I will not return to this space refreshed or ready to approach this project with a new sense of perspective. However, I return with renewed purpose. In the future, you may not post as much as you would prefer. But I’ve decided that continuing to write, continuing to share my story and the stories of others, is ultimately more important than not publishing at all. I have seen the power and strength that comes when people talk about mental health and mental illness, and it is these moments that continue to drive me.
However this journey continues for My Brain’s Not Broken, I am enthusiastic. I want to give myself the grace and understanding that I give to others because we are often kinder to others than to ourselves. Although mental health awareness has improved in many ways since I started this blog, people’s mental health and well-being are being tested in ways I couldn’t imagine a decade ago. The only thing I can do now, in this moment, is keep moving at my own pace, deliberately, with my head up and one foot in front of the other. And I hope that when you have those same moments where you feel like you have no more to give, you can find the ability to do the same.
.png)
