A Bunch of Gears in our Monkey Wrench

The TL;DR is that we have to put a moratorium on "Blogust."

I'm still going to write all of the articles I promised, it'll just probably take me well into September to get them done.

Anyone following this blog knows that life has been coming on a little too strong for.....oh about 20 and a half months now. Even as my writing slowly returns to pre-Contrarian days, I am still working hard to find that balance point of equilibrium between standing up for my boundaries and being a good family member.

In a couple of days, my family is taking The Contrarian to his very first trip to Disneyland and a little over a week after I get back, I'll be heading to Burning Man for a few days. My fall teaching semester begins....well, later today actually, I'm still getting tapped for 40-50 hours of housekeeping and Contrarian watching each week, and don't even get me started on the rather depressing fact that our numbers, while better, were nowhere near where they would need to be to make Blog happy.

I want to enjoy these vacations rather than be only dimly aware of their fun among a miasma of stress and feelings of failure. I find that as they loom, I'm just feeling more and more overwhelmed and not looking forward to them at all. If I don't change the game, neither will be much of a vacation. Rather than struggle all the way to the finish line and ruin my time (and everyone else's honestly), I'm going to call the time of death on this particular stretch goal a little early.

See folks: I fail all the time. What I don't do is let it stop me from writing.

"Aug" is a fantastic rhyme with "Blog" but it turns out that August is a dreadfully shitty time to try to ramp UP writing...at least for me....at least right now in my life. I'll have to go for the shittier rhyme of Blogtober when I've got no plans, will be deep in a routine, and hopefully filled with lots of motivation from my multiple birthday groupie threesomes. (Sign ups start soon!)

I will continue to do the Blogust fundraiser, of course–all donations matched twice (up to $1000) and I'm still going to keep posting daily content. I just need a bit more breather space between the heavy hitters.

Thank you for reading and all your support. Plus for everyone who gave me words of encouragement on the various social media where I first announced I might do this, your words were very helpful.