A Reintroduction

Over the last few years, I have given up the blog. I have given up writing altogether, really. It's a shame, because I enjoy it, but also because it is a very integral part of who I am. I love to write and it is one of the few things I do effortlessly. Never perfectly, but with far more joy and grace than I can bake something from scratch or complete a basic mathematic task.

The best watermelon we've ever had. We'll keep trying... 

In the loss of writing, I lost a lot more than I bargained for. It took a long time to figure it out, but I finally have. By writing, I commune with myself. I am 100% introvert. I love people and I am great with them, but I recharge by spending time on my own. I can do that just fine without writing, but when I don't write, I don't speak with myself. I don't get to know my true, unaffiliated feelings and thoughts on any given topic. It is important to know yourself, but how can you be anything more than an acquaintance to someone who you don't hang out and talk with?

I think my methods may be a bit more than most people require, but they suit me. I am a slow processor. I love to give a thought or a feeling time. Letting time do it's work feels as if I get a more clear view than if I had act immediately. An "I know now what I knew then, but I didn't know then, what I know now" kind of approach. Isaac Brock must also employ this method. I know several people who are very passionate about the 'gut reaction' and will have their full reaction for you in moments. Sometimes, I envy them.

Basil babies sweating it out, waiting for spring. 

Now that a few years have passed, I live in a 1950's brick ranch outside of Blairsville with my boyfriend and our roommate. I gave up the free rent and 30 step commute of living in the apartment at Mountian Crossings, through I still work there. It felt like time to grow up and start setting roots, though the waves of responsibility crash over me overwhelmingly from time to time and I question my noble efforts at "adulthood".


Still, I've got more than I ever planned to have. A good sized house, a nice yard, several out buildings for project space, a couple raised beds for gardening, an awesome water barrel system to assist, a few fruit trees and plans for chickens and bees. If you got to be tied down to a ball and chain, this one is just about a nice as it gets in your 20's.

We work hard but it's too fun to be hard work.

I have to work two jobs to really make things add up financially but one is at the backpacking store on the Appalachian Trail and the another as a raft guide on the Ocoee River. If ever I complain about work, I am being a selfish child, as neither of my jobs truly encompasses the grueling drudgery most Americans call work. Despite working a lot, my boyfriend and I still find time and permission to squeeze in a three week road trip here or a float down the Grand Canyon there. It is a life that has become better than expected.

Still, there is a hole, an omission of confusion, that I feel. Something is missing, what is it? A lack of self-something. Respect? Not quite. Discipline? Maybe. Knowing. Most likely. A lack of self-knowing. Why yes, Katy Perry, I have, a time or two before, occasionally felt like a plastic bag. A little aimless and worrisomely aware of my lack of control of the wind.

Bigger than a trail family and twice as rowdy. 

When I begin to worry that I am not who I used to be, well that is because I am not, and I won't ever be again. That's called normal. But by not writing, I feel as if I haven't kept up with my old pal, me. I am hoping to do better for myself by writing consistently. That takes place in all sorts of forms, one being this blog, but hopefully it will help reacquaint me with myself.