Greetings Gentle Readers,
I am struggling with a difficult issue, which is my ability to keep up with and respond to both comments left on the blog and to emails sent to me at my blog email address. I am deeply grateful to everyone who takes the time to write a comment or an email. The community here has been very supportive and very helpful in my journey and both comments and emails have often been very encouraging. One point I want to be crystal clear about, which is that no one has done anything at all wrong in contacting me. I have made my email address available which was most certainly my choice.
But the truth is, the blog has been much more successful than I ever expected and the volume of both comments and emails has been slowly but steadily climbing. I am working hard to maintain good boundaries around my self-care and only devote such time as I have available, but I am finding that amount of time to be more and more inadequate as time goes by. And frankly, I can feel a lot of guilt about not replying in a timely manner while also feeling a bit drained by a constant sense of pressure. I feel always behind. (First world problem! Again, I very much appreciate the feedback and the success of the blog has been VERY gratifying!)
I am also working on several projects, including working on a book, but am finding all of my writing time being consumed by answering comments and emails. (This has not been helped by the fact that while my husband’s retirement has lifted much of the burden of the housework from me, he is also up later in the evenings and I am still working on finding a consistent time to write.) So, I am feeling like I can either write on my blog and work on a book OR keep up with answering my readers.
In mulling this over, I realized that the solution, as it so often is, is vulnerability and honesty. I am admitting defeat and that I am human and cannot continue to keep up. So I am going to quit trying to. I still welcome all of your comments and emails; I promise I do read everything I get, but I cannot promise to reply to every communication. Please do not take it personally, this is not due to any one person nor do I wish to give the impression that a reply somehow depends on the importance of a subject or the worth of the person writing. My ability to answer is based on a fairly complicated algorithm of whether I have the time and energy available and whether inspiration strikes.
One thing I would like to encourage is for people who comment to feel free to interact. I have a lot of insightful, mature, intelligent readers whom I am sure can offer really good feedback to people looking for help. If you see a comment and feel moved to reply, please feel free. I would really enjoy more interaction between the people who read here.
Thanks in advance for your understanding. This has been a hard place to come to, but I think it’s needed so I don’t just disappear to escape the (admittedly self-generated) pressure.
