I was thinking yesterday that I missed blogs. I miss the days of logging into whatever blogging platform you choose – for me it was Livejournal, Blogspot (for the secret, mega-personal blog I kept in college), Vox, and now WordPress. There’s so much emphasis on video content that many of my favorite creators have long abandoned blogging. But I still love blogging, even if I don’t blog as often myself. I like documenting my world through writing – other video-based platforms just aren’t as appealing.

I hope you all are doing well! It’s been a whirlwind several months of travel and work. Since March, I’ve been to Texas thrice (twice for work, once for fun), St. Louis (for fun), Pennsylvania (for work), and France (for fun. Although I’m totally cool if work decides to send me there, too). In the past, I’ve liked using this blog as a way to document EVERYTHING I’ve experienced on a trip (“DAY 4 OF MY TRIP”) but I’m so far behind on those posts, now. And I wonder what good it does, anyway – maybe travel blogs are best left to document the highs or the lows, or moments of discovery or introspection, rather than serving as exhaustive travel diaries. I haven’t found that medium yet, but it’s something to explore here.

I was in France last week for a visual journaling retreat with two artists/illustrators I’ve long been fans of, Meera Lee Patel and Rebecca Green. Although I consider myself a writer, I certainly don’t consider myself an artist by any means (insert repressed memories from my second grade art teacher telling me I was doing it wrong and erasing my work here). I was intimidated since just about everyone else on the retreat is a legitimate, working, super-talented artist. But everyone was so kind and encouraging, and I really enjoyed my time there. It was a great creative boost. And since I’m a quarter French (not something I talk about often since I didn’t really grow up with the culture), it was really cool to be able to explore a bit of my heritage.

I am still unpacking a lot of the trip (in a good way). I have a feeling I will be talking about it more here soon.

But now it’s back to work and to the chaos that is life at the moment. I can say with certainty that I’m definitely NOT BORED at work, but I am completely overloaded with projects at the moment. When things are hectic, I like finding control through keeping the house neat and clean. But since we’re getting our floors restored next week, the house is…not neat and clean. We have to move everything out of the rooms that are being restored, which means that my office currently looks like this:

I’m trying to tell myself that this is just a season, and that all THIS – house renovation projects, travel, mountain of projects of work – is impossible to control. That all I can do is the best that I can, with the tools that I have, and show up every day the best version of myself possible and get things done. That, of course, is easier said than done. Especially when you decide to pull your back the week before all this home renovation. UGH!

But my hurt back is the reason why I can do a blog post this morning – it’s too painful for me to go to the yoga studio. Instead I decided to update this blog and work on a watercolor book I have:

Before I leave, an update on a couple more creative projects in the works:

• My blog, 10 Reasons Why You Might Have Failed the PE Exam, is up at the School of PE. I’ve written a post about environmental field work that I’m pretty excited about – that should be published soon.
• Last year, I made it to the final round for the NYC Midnight 100-Word Microfiction Challenge. I entered again this year and found out I’d made it to the second round. I wrote my story on the plane back to the states, and finished it while extremely jet-lagged and waiting an hour and a half for my checked bag (AN HOUR AND A HALF).
• On the crafts front, I have a long overdue baby blanket that needs to get finished (I am so, so, so behind on baby blankets for my friends). But this came in the mail yesterday and it’s a big distraction:

Ok, I need to stretch my decrepit back and get to work. If you are in the northern hemisphere, I hope you are enjoying summer!