It's not because I don't mean it, but every time I sit down to write what I intended to, I feel the urge to first apologize for not showing up sooner. I want to explain myself and explain why that week in particular was so busy and how I meant to post or how I missed blogging... All things that are true, but once I begin, I find myself wallowing in my excuses, feeling a bit defeated for not having a better grip on my time. My honest words stare back as reasons why I'm not very good at blogging and I should probably not continue. So I close the screen without thinking twice.
I'm realizing that apologizing for life moving too fast is not a very conducive way to start moving again. It takes a bit to get back on your feet—and I have to learn that that's okay. Sometimes good things take time.
I've tried editorial calendars, weekly series, and pre-posts to help with a consistent blogging schedule, but at least in this season for me right now, none of them seem to help. In fact, they seem to make blogging more difficult! There are nights when I am filled with inspiration and good news, and want to share them with you, but then I remember Friday is coming up and I'm supposed to share a graphic. Or it's Monday and I'm supposed to talk about professional development. All topics I enjoy and were my idea to begin with, but they were put in place to be helpful, and if they're not being helpful then I should take a minute to reevaluate.
I like writing about professional development and creating graphics, don't get me wrong, but I want to have grace for myself that if I can't do it that week, then it's okay. I don't have to avoid the blog all together, I can just write about what I want to write. I hope that's okay with you, too. One day, I'd like to have a more structured set up, but I don't think now is the time. I really respected certain blogs because they had more structure and series to follow, and I thought if I implemented those, too, my readership would grow and Coffee & Honeycomb's identity would grow, but if it's not working for me, then I have to learn to accept that. If I'm right about one thing, I hope it's this.
Coffee & Honeycomb is a space for us to feel okay in our smallness, to show up as no one but ourselves, to let our souls breathe and feel safe in our skin. I never want it to be anything but that. So if I every veer off track, then I want to be honest enough to acknowledge it and turn back around.
I wrote the purpose of Coffee & Honeycomb last November, and I forgot. I do apologize for that, forgetting the true purpose and turning it into a platform to find worth and significance. Here is what I wrote in November to remind myself what this place is really about:
Coffee & Honeycomb is entirely dedicated to him, it's a love story to Him, and a live, beating heartbeat and reminder that God loves me. My only response is to share the good news with the rest of the world, too, hence, the title "Coffee & Honeycomb." It is a declaration of the ways God has been so good to me and because I believe that His words are sweet to the soul and bring healing to the bones, Coffee & Honeycomb exists.So, I'm saying now that there will be no more apologies for late posts here on out. :) I hope you know that it's implied; that I do cherish Coffee & Honeycomb and regret when I am MIA for an extended period of time, but I'm throwing it out of my language so that I never view blogging as a burden but as a release.
I hope you, too, join with me and take a step back: what is holding you back? what is something you want to stop apologizing for? as a blogger, have you ever had a time where you had to take a step back and changed things around?
