In Conclusion, Don't Worry About It

Hi.

It's been a while (like, 46 days a while to be exact).

I used to blog every day, or, at least mostly every day. I haven't been doing that lately. Before this, my last blog was titled "Done!!!! (Sort Of)". If you read the blog, you can see it was written directly following my last undergrad class. If you just read the title, you might have thought it meant I was done blogging. Turns out they were both kind of right.

At first it was just one day that I missed. That one day turned to a weekend. That weekend turned to finals week and graduation. That turned into moving and vacation.

You see, I've done lots of things since that last blog. I turned in my last ever undergrad paper. I took my last ever undergrad final. I went to a concert and I graduated and I packed up everything I had accumulated for the two years I lived at CNP and moved it to a storage unit.

I went hiking in Utah for a lot of days and drove just as many days to get to those hiking destinations. My car's starter broke so I was stranded in Yankton for a day while it got fixed. I moved into a hotel. I almost entirely finished the yearbook (!!!). I applied for approximately 57 jobs and interviewed for the one I wanted least. I still have to turn that one down. There's been an episode of two of Grey's Anatomy here and there, too.

But I could have blogged during those times. It's not like I haven't had a few hours here and there. It just... didn't feel right. I missed a day and then a weekend and then a week because I was busy doing graduate things. When I missed those days it didn't feel wrong. But it quickly became something I put off because it seemed too overwhelming to continue rather than something I just didn't have time to do.

When I went hiking I read Lauren Graham's "In Conclusion, Don't Worry About It", a transcript of a speech she gave at a commencement, while sitting on top of a cliff. It was cool. Here's a picture of that:

When I was hiking I wasn't thinking about blogging. I was mostly thinking of drinking enough water that I stayed hydrated but not drinking so much that I had to pee every fifteen minutes. I was thinking about really, really not wanting to have to poop in a bag. I was thinking about slot canyons and arches and the flies that were biting my legs and the bruise on my left hip from my pack.

But one day Luke and I stuck around camp while his siblings did the final few miles. And so I had some time to read. And it made me think about blogging. I used to worry about this blog, and about if I did it every day. But Lauren Graham made me realize that I shouldn't worry about it. This should be fun. Not work. She writes: "Love yourself, and what you're doing, even if you're not yet at the place you hope to land. Let joy be the thing that drives you, and I bet you'll get there faster. Give yourself permission to make mistakes. Those mistakes are as valuable as the triumphs."

I'm going to try to have fun with it again. After all, you can only write so many cover letters while you're shut in your tiny hotel room.

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