Bass Ackward

My dad is fond of swearing without actually swearing. It’s the act of making a point without triggering censure. (Or at least that’s the idea. It doesn’t always turn out that way…) One of his favored approaches is to swap the first letters of words in a phrase that would otherwise be unfit for delicate ears. That’s how we end up with Bass Ackward. (I’ll give you a moment to untangle that and realize that, no, it isn’t just an embarrassing typo.)

It’s no secret that I started this blog at a point in my life when happiness was a theoretical concept, a faint memory. All I wanted was to be happier. I wanted to figure out how to build a life that brought me joy. A good goal, definitely. And I even made some progress. But then I hit a rut, and my half-hearted efforts to drag myself back out just created a wider, deeper track. One day I woke up and realized I was staring up at the sky from the bottom of my own emotional Grand Canyon. That might be a wee bit over-dramatic (and by “might” I mean “absolutely”). It’s not that things were so bad; they just weren’t particularly good, and I felt mired in it. What I wanted was there, but it seemed just out of reach.

And then, one random, magical day, my mind opened itself up and embraced one of those truths about the world that sounds simple in theory but is remarkably challenging to internalize.

Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in

So. It’s been awhile. A long while. It’s possible (er, probable) that “awhile” isn’t the right term for this scenario. I’ve broken the covenant between blogger and reader. Bad llama. (Emperor’s New Groove, anyone? Also, it’s possible that this picture is an alpaca, not a llama. All I know is it always makes me laugh and imagine a crazy uncle…)

Here’s the thing. I enjoyed writing this here blog, but I realized that it fed right into some of my more vexing personality quirks, namely that setting myself a goal is the surest way to rob me of all motivation to do it. And blogging was crowding out other things. Important life things. I got lost in a big ball of stress, aaaaaand…here we are, almost two years later.

Let’s just call it a hiatus. And let’s also say that I’m back. Provisionally. On an as-yet-undetermined schedule. I feel like I need to re-introduce myself to this process, to this wee corner of the internet that I created and then abandoned. I have no idea what it will look like or how it will work, but I know that I’ve missed this. Missed the outlet. Missed you.

So, this is me peeking my head out, peering around, and deciding to slide back in. The good news? In terms of building a happier life? Lots of progress. Can’t wait to tell you about it.