The Porch Swing Chronicles: 4 Reasons I'm Still Here on the Porch Swing

It's Wednesday, which means that today, I'm preparing posts for two different sites -- this one and my Organizing by STYLE site. Some weeks I'm ahead of the curve, having come up with an idea and written the scheduled post. Other weeks, I stare at the screen or look around my office, hoping a topic will present itself.

Needless to say, I prefer the former to the latter.

When I retired from Education Career #1 eight years ago, I committed to posting here regularly. I'd been dabbling at blogging for six years, squeezing in posts whenever time and the muse became available simultaneously. One of my goals when I left my job as a school counselor was to move toward full-time writing, and posting regularly was a step toward that goal. I'd heard other writers complain about how blogging detracted from "real" writing but, as a newly retired person, I thought I had time to do both.

Lately, though, I've been finding it easy to identify with those complaints. I have multiple writing projects going and, having embarked on Education Career #2, it's no longer simply a matter of time, but a matter of creative energy as well. I find myself sighing on Tuesdays, the day I don't post anywhere, relieved that I can jump immediately into a writing project that's not a blog post, pouring all of my energy into a book or an article.

If you're wondering if this is a Dear Reader, it's-not-you-it's-me letter, let me put your mind at ease. I mean, it is me and I have thought of cutting back so I can see other projects but, for one reason or another, I always decide in favor of sticking to the promises I made in 2012, six years after I first posted from my perch on the porch swing, and again in 2015, when I launched Organizing by STYLE.

Here are a few of the reasons I continue to show up.

I like talking to my readers. Sure, I can still do this to a certain extent with articles and non-fiction endeavors like Know Thyself, but they're more like business meetings. Blog posts, on the other hand, are more like sitting down with a friend over a cup of coffee (iced tea for me, please) or, some days, a glass of wine, depending on when I sit down to write the post.
It's good practice. Writers get better by writing and we get better at meeting deadlines when we get practice doing that as well. Enough said.
I'm better with words than other formats. I've been encouraged more than once to go on Instagram, something I did last summer before Know Thyself came out, but I'm a writer, not a visual artist and I hate selfies. Perhaps I'll learn to love Instagram over time but, right now, I'd much rather be here than there. Did I mention that I like talking to my readers?
Pixabay
I enjoy it. Most of the time anyway. Sure, I sometimes wish there were 27 hours in the day so that saying yes to blogging didn't mean saying no to something else (often Instagram) but most of the time, I like being here.