Life Lately – A Brain Dump

You guys. I’ve been writing here at Pocketful of Joules since 2011 and sometimes I run out of things to write about. I mean, I have plenty of things to say. But some things are just for me (and not for the blog).

Sometimes I wonder why I keep up with blogging at all, with all the changes that have come over the years. Bloggers previously lived for visit numbers and comments, only to have a different world now. People just don’t *follow* blogs the way they used to. AI search engines scrape our websites. People can be quite mean behind a computer screen. Often it feels like just yelling into a void. And on and on.

When it comes down to it, I blog because I enjoy it. I love looking back at life over the years, especially those adorable baby Jack photos and stories. It’s a great way for me to remember when and where we went on our adventures. And I love giving advice about things that might make someone else’s life a bit easier or better.

With all that being said, I just don’t know what I want to write about right now. In one way, my world feels content and settled. But in another way, it feels helpless.

So, here’s a mishmash of a few things inside my head that might make the blog at some point:

• Perimenopause. A lot of perimenopause.
• Jack has agreed to try out for a couple of the running teams when he starts high school. So, this has somehow turned into me helping him with a ‘couch to 5k’ program. Which I’m pretty sure is about to turn into me running again (even though I don’t want to).
• A lot of anxiety. About lots of different things.
• I’ve lost between 15 – 20 pounds over the last year due to some diet changes and workout changes. EOE issues are a big motivator… vomiting is no fun. While part of me wants to write about it, another part of me doesn’t want to jinx myself and/or invite any conversation about my body. I certainly didn’t want anyone to bring it up when I slowly gained weight over the years, so why bring it up when I slowly lost weight?
• Stained glass art projects – I finished another panel and I’m working on a suncatcher/mobile thing. Every step is a problem to solve and trying something new, which I feel is good for my brain.
• Retirement. Will I be able to retire at 65? What about 60? Should I be doing more now to make that happen? Or, should I make sure to give us little treats now because the future is not guaranteed?
• Loneliness.
• Do I want another tattoo? And if I do want another tattoo, am I just going to fall down a rabbit hole of trying to find the perfect artist to make the idea in my mind happen on my skin. And what if they look good online, but actually suck. And I think I’d want a female artist. Because men.
• Ollie, my little old man puppy dog, has been getting older and he’s now 14ish. He has moments where he’s not doing well and I am absolutely not ready to lose him. Which in honesty, I will probably never be ready to lose him.
• Parenting a 14 year old. Holy crap. I want to love him to death and I want to sit on him. And why do his feet smell bad? And why does he want to keep putting them on me? And how is he able to eat so much? And OHMYGOD the kid just grew 2 more inches in a month. But at some point, I think I need to stop writing about him because he’s like a fully formed human.
• I’m so tired.