little white truths

I've found it harder and harder to blog for the past month, and while that's mostly because work has been so busy, I'm still finding it hard to sit down and write something on those days when I have no work on, like today.

I've been scratching my head over this a bit because it hasn't happened to me before. Sure, there have been times when I've been super tired and struggled to write, but I've mostly been able to push through that and do at least one post, then get back on the blogging train the next day.

But at the moment my head's too drained for all that, so October has been my lowest blogging month on record - and it's my lowest by a long shot. My next lowest month after this one yielded more than three times the amount of October's posts, so the fatigue has definitely set in and I'll have to navigate through it somehow, although it likely won't lift for a while because my husband is going overseas on business tomorrow for five days and then of course we're heading into the silly season, so there's that.

I should say that it hasn't been a lack of inspiration that's held me back from writing. Indeed, I have plenty of ideas for posts - and over the last month, I've written topics in the subject line and then a sentence or two of text in the body (sometimes a paragraph if I'm lucky) before closing my computer because I haven't had the steam to go further.

Is it boredom? Maybe. I do think there's a bit of that. I have a bunch of beauty reviews and empties posts I could write, but I just don't feel like it. I've been writing those for over five years now, and for the first time ever, I've lost the steam for it. Are those things gone for good? Maybe again. I really can't say. This could just be a glitch in the proverbial matrix and I'll be back on the wagon next month, although the way things feel at the moment, I'd say that's unlikely. Next year. Maybe maybe.

Am I tired of beauty products? After all, I only started loving makeup and skincare eight years ago - it's not as though I've loved it all my life. But I don't think that's true. I still love what I own and use it every day, it's just that I'm no longer scouring the new releases and always wanting more - which has to be a good thing because I don't need more stuff and need to get through what I have first. 

I will say, though, that I appear to have fallen back in love with fragrance. I've loved perfumes since my teens and those have always been my beauty products of choice (the other stuff is a newer obsession), so it doesn't surprise me that I've gone back to scents. Swings and roundabouts. All the items on my wishlist at the moment are perfumes, and I've asked for some for Christmas - rather than asking for skincare like I've done in years past. Perhaps I should start to review some of those.

To be honest, I think what's going on here more than anything else is that my brain is sick of the same old thing. I've been dealing with pregnancies and babies and toddlers for the last five years, and the blog has gotten me through that period while I've been brain-dead. But things have woken up lately and my mind is no longer happy being told what to do. As in, waking up and posting a review that needs to be written doesn't appeal in the way it once did. Even writing a post on a topic that I jotted some notes down for during the week. No, my brain isn't happy with that either. It wants to be free.

Indeed, that's exactly what happened this morning. I woke up thinking I would finish my October favourites (I started that post yesterday), but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. So then I looked at my list of drafts with their subject lines, and none of those appealed either. What my head really wanted to do was this, post on a topic it had thought of in that moment. And that's really been October for me - writing posts on ideas that have just come to me. There's a freedom in that, and it's something I've missed.

I guess what I'm trying to do with this post is work out why I haven't had the steam for blogging lately, because although I can point at some reasons, those reasons have existed before and I've always been able to write through them. This is different. It's deeper, more consuming, and it's showing no sign of lifting. But it does seem to me that there comes a time after having children when you want to change the status quo, when you don't want to do the same thing every day for your work or hobby because the rest of your life is groundhog day and is almost completely based around kids. So one day you throw your own little internal tantrum and do things differently. Perhaps other parents can relate.

For the moment, I think I'll just have to be happy with blogging when I can, and allowing my brain to go where it wants to go. There's so much about having young kids that can make you feel trapped, so if sitting down at my computer and writing whatever I feel like in that moment is going to help the situation, then perhaps there's nothing wrong with doing that for now.

Hope all's well with you, and speak soon x

* All images courtesy of unsplash.com