Eight... But Great?

Eight years.  That's how long this blog has been around.  Eight years.

And I've not really written much here lately.  Like, at all.  It's pitiful.  I mean, the seventh birthday post still fits on the homepage.  I'm sorry, Bloggy.

Part of me has wanted to change that for quite a while now, but it would likely mean a major shift in the overall tone of this blog.  Not that that would be a bad thing; on the contrary, it's just about expected that a 25-year-old's blog is going to read differently from that of a 17-year-old.  But I've needed to get some things in place in my own life before I'd be comfortable doing that here.  This has been a slow but continual process.  Watch this space (just not too intently).

So even though eight has not been great of late (see what I did there?), it's time to bake the annual bloggy cake.  Happy birthday, Bloggy!

Meanwhile, 2013 has been a wild ride for me so far.  The last several months in particular have been especially rough, but I've been getting through it and am making concerted efforts to try to stay happy and content despite the difficulties.  A good part of the difficulty has been in trying to find the right lens through which to view my accomplishments.  According to some of the qualitative metrics I've used in the past to gauge my achievements, I've been failing miserably.  But according to other, newer metrics, I'm experiencing a ton of personal and professional growth.  ("Remind me to tell you about that some time," he says yet again.)

I've never been great at work-life balance, but sometime in the last year, things got way off-kilter, and it's not been fun.  But although not all of my efforts to bring things back into an equilibrium have been successful, I'm still working on it.

Starting with a slice of bloggy cake.