Changes

Things have been changing. Inside me, around me, in a lot of ways. It affects everything. No, I'm not pregnant. This cycle failed. Not sure what went wrong, but I never really felt unmistakably pregnant like the previous 3 times, so I'm treating it as a failed cycle. I'm still very disappointed--I had my hopes really high--but it's different than if I had believed beyond a doubt that I was pregnant.

What's been changing is my attitude towards myself and my life and especially this blog. I had 4 weeks of pure happiness that started with the vacation The Mister and I took at the end of May. I felt like I'd reset the clock and gone back the the hopeful place before all this infertility and miscarriage stuff took over my life last spring. Then my MIL popped up and triggered more childhood trauma and spoiled the peace. And then I got a BFN. Which made for a really hard week last week. But I think I'm recovering better than I would have a few months ago.

During the weeks I was in that place of hope, I found that I didn't want to blog. I didn't miss it. I did read along with some of the blogs I've been following, but I gave myself permission not to read every post, and not to comment unless I had something to say. Because, unfortunately, trying to keep up with everyone and read every post and comment as much as possible had become a chore. I was trying to be so conscientious about my reading and commenting that it was taking several hours a day, and leaving me exhausted. When I didn't miss blogging on our vacation, I decided not to pick it back up at the same level when we got home. I cut back to about thirty minutes a day (an hour at the very most) on the blogs, and I was much happier.

This probably sounds crazy to a lot of you, but it seems to be true for me. The less time I spend on-line, no matter how supportive and like-minded a community I'm participating in, the happier I am. So I backed off for my own sanity. No disrespect meant to any of you--you are all great people with really interesting blogs--but I need to live my life IRL in order to be happy.

I doubt I'll be posting or updating very frequently, so if that bugs you and you want to stop following, no hard feelings. I'll definitely still read the blogs I'm already following, although I won't be actively looking for new ones. And when something really moves me, I will comment. But I'm going to try to keep it in balance with the rest of my life. So I'll probably also be a lot quieter than I was up until about a month ago.