A Year And A Half Later

A year and a half later, here we are again.

If you're just tuning in, hi I'm Meagan and I've written and posted with no regularity, consistency, or plan since I started this blog in 2018, and also since I created an Instagram account in 2012. I've posted on whims, emotional highs, mental health lows, and a lot of time without much editing involved. And I've not blogged in almost a year and a half.

Here's how I'd like to change that.

I'd like to write in honesty and vulnerability, with clarity, wit, and dark humor. I'd like to write about what it's like to live with mental health struggles from a more positive perspective and show you what I do on low days to keep myself afloat and grasping at joy. I'd like to write some flash fiction every so often because that's what I love. And I'd like to write with consistency because even if the only people who are reading this are my mom and my husband (hi) and a random person who clicked on a link by mistake, I want to 1) give those three wonderful people regularity and 2) make myself write. *

*That second one is something that has taken me a while (I guess a year and a half) to come to terms with. Sometimes being an adult is doing hobbies you know you love even when you don't feel like doing them. For example, sometimes depression shows up as apathy for things you love and the best way to fight that is to tell your depression to gently and lovingly suck it and do the hobby. I know writing is something I love and something that will make me feel more human in a weird, creative way, so sometimes I just have to do it, even when I'm not "feeling it," because those are the moments where I win just a little bit against depression. And winning even the smallest victory over a mental health struggle is the most bad-ass, adult thing you can do.

I'd also like to write with intentionality and with lots of editing. I got to cringe hardcore today as I re-read some old things on this blog because for one thing I was posting at random but the bigger reason being I would write and then hit publish with no pause or thought in between. This one short piece I'm writing today has been edited and re-written several times, and I'm sure it could still use more editing but I'm hungry so I'm going ahead with the posting so I can get a snack. All of that to say that I want to hold my own pieces to a higher standard than what they've been so I can be prouder of the work I've written in years to come than I was today at some of my quickly-written-in-a-daze pieces from 2019. *

* In full transparency, I have deleted some of the cringe-ier ones from this blog but left a few just as (hopefully) proof that I can write better now with experience and lots of editing under my belt.

In tandem with thoughts of consistency, I'm coming off of a two-week social media hiatus. Maybe more about that in another post, but for now I'll say it was 1) eye-opening at just how addicted I am to sending my husband memes through Instagram, 2) a great detox in that I thought about what I actually missed about Instagram which will help me shape my feed and how I spend my time scrolling, and 3) important in that it got me thinking about why and how I post and why and how I can do that better.

So here's what I'm offering, to my mom, Robert, and that one rando (if you're still here and haven't left yet to go find the link you were actually looking for) for the rest of the year:

On my blog - One post a week (on Sundays). I'll divide my posts into either Real Talk or Flash Fiction.

On Instagram - One Reel a week (on Fridays) where I post about things I did that week that were good or nice for my mental health *

* In the hopes of a) living by example and encouraging others to be nice to themselves and b) giving myself some encouragement each week as I look back and see that yes in fact I was nice and can continue to be nice to myself. Also my instagram is @miballen if you stumbled here not through Instagram.

That's it. That's all I got.

See you next week.