Should I Stay or Should I Go?

So.

Here I am again.

The last few times I have sat down at my computer and attempted to blog anything, I have had a serious case of writer's block. And that has led to a lot of angst over whether or not I should just go ahead and pull the plug on this pitiful little blog of mine and put it out of its misery.

The problem is, I don't know what I want my blog to be anymore. I don't know what purpose I want it to serve. I will freely confess that I rarely read blogs anymore, preferring Facebook instead due to its feeling of "community." My brother and I had an interesting conversation about Facebook this week and he gave me some things to think about, but I doubt I'll change my habits. He is a fellow FB user, but his take on it is that people SAY they want community but in reality, we all just want to be voyeurs and have a glimpse into others' lives without any actual interaction. And while I totally get where he's coming from, I also think there is another side. On the contrary, on FB I get almost instant feedback to questions I pose; random comments can generate some fun conversations; and as for interaction, I told my brother that I have several FB "friends" whom I have gotten to know much better simply by being online with them!

Whether or not Facebook is to blame I do not know; what I do know is that I simply feel unmotivated to share what's going on in my life right now. Another confession: My life lately has just felt sort of . . . hard. Messy. There haven't been a whole lot of laughs. Do you really want to read about that?

My readership is down--I know that as well. I guess that's prone to happen when one only blogs once a month! But the truth be told, that makes me sad and I feel a sort of pressure to come back and WOW my three remaining readers with an anecdote so sensational, everybody else will just be drawn back through osmosis or something. I'm pathetic, really.

In thinking back over the last few months, when it seems my blogging really began to drop off, I realize that part of the problem is the "season" I'm in. And I'm not talking about fall, winter, spring or summer; no, I'm talking about the season of life I'm in, with one child on the verge of teendom, two tweens and a five-year-old going on 25. We are just flat BUSY. The parents constantly on the run, taking a child to/from practice, heading out on a field trip, running to an appointment? We are that family. I'm not complaining--yet--because almost without exception, everything we've done we've been able to do together. I do recall that right at the tail end of Tyler's basketball season Sawyer was just about spent, but the truth is so was I!

Baseball season has started out much differently; okay, so there haven't been any actual games played yet (first one is Monday night), and Tyler is the only one playing right now, so we've had a bit of a breather. The factor that has made the difference is that for the first time, Randy is helping to coach Tyler's team so he has been able to take Tyler to each and every practice, enabling me to do other things with Darcy, Peyton and Sawyer that don't involve driving to a ballpark, twiddling our thumbs for two hours while watching batting practice and eating loads of concession stand junk food to pass the time. In fact, now that I think about it, I'm not sure what I would have done if Randy had not agreed to help coach! Well, actually, I suppose I would have dropped Tyler off at the appointed time and said, "See ya in two hours!" We signed him up with North Arlington Little League this year and it's clear that NALL takes baseball a lot more seriously than the YMCA does!

We also signed Darcy up for softball through NALL but after weeks of no communication, I finally received an e-mail (in response to my e-mail to the director AND my e-mail and voicemail to the president of NALL) stating that there weren't enough girls registered to form a team--better luck next time. Darcy was crushed, I was sort of let down, but truthfully, we just bought ourselves a whole lot more time! I half-heartedly asked Randy if we should just sign her up for Y softball again this year and he had no problem with it, but when I heard through the grapevine that we had missed the registration deadline, I adopted an attitude of nonchalance and went about my business. In fact, after spending a day in Argyle this week and hearing that my niece is thinking of taking up tennis (have I mentioned that Randy would dearly LOVE for our kids to play tennis?), Randy suggested we fill the softball-sized hole in Darcy's schedule with tennis instead.

But lo and behold, yesterday I received an e-mail from Darcy's former coach, stating that he is coaching again this year and is looking to get his team back together. Naturally, Darcy is thrilled so it looks like she may be breaking out the ol' cleats after all.

Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines.