This isn’t going to be a long post, because I’m exhausted! It’s not an ongoing exhaustion, just that I took Louie to the airport very early this morning and then had a normal day afterwards.

Sometimes I question if I want to continue blogging. I’m not terribly regular, though I’d like to be, and then I worry I overshare, no one cares, I look like a narcissist, and more. Maybe everybody is out there laughing at me. (Maybe everybody is out there having fun without me.)

But blogging is enjoyable for me.  I enjoy sharing, I enjoy the community I gain from being online, and I enjoy looking back and seeing what I’ve written over the years. If that’s narcissism, so be it

I don’t always want to sit down at the computer and write something about my life. Sometimes the thoughts I have are negative and I feel I should keep them to myself. Other times I have too many thoughts. Sometimes I have a lot of other things to do at the computer and I do those things instead. (I always have a lot of things to do at the computer, but I don’t always do them!).

It’s easy to become negative, to worry that nobody cares, that nobody values you or your time. Especially in my freelance career, it’s very easy to become negative! This month has been especially hard, because I see all my friends and colleagues (yes, ALL OF THEM, ha!) on facebook being overly busy and complaining of all the performances they are doing, and here I am, having less gigs than normal and struggling to get my students to show up for their lessons, and feeling like the end of the year is a real financial struggle…and it’s easy to feel rejected and overlooked. But the truth is, maybe it’s a light year for work. Maybe I need to network more (lunch/coffee anyone?) or put myself out there more. Maybe people think I’m overly busy and didn’t ask me to do stuff for that reason. My brain starts to tell me, oh, it’s because I’m not from here that nobody is calling, or because my ex is in the symphony so I’m quasi-black-listed, or because they read my blog and think I’m a little bit crazy…and who knows. Maybe some of those things are true, but I can’t change it! And frankly, probably the only true things are that I have to keep putting myself out there, and I need to not panic and know that October and November were great months and I’m doing just fine.

Sigh. This fall has been particularly challenging because of all the pet issues. I’m living in a house with THREE elderly pets, all of whom are now on medications, some more challenging than others, and I worry about the furry guys. So there’s lots of stress: pets, money, climate change (seriously, where’s the cold weather?), and there’s quite a bit of jealously and comparing my inside to everybody’s outside (ALWAYS a bad idea) and there you have it. That’s why I blog. Because it’s a journal, sure, but a journal that I share, about my thoughts, and I always feel better afterwards, AND I hope that other people reading it feel better too. I want to share in the hopes that other people feel like I do, or understand me, or have something in common. Because sometimes I feel so darned isolated, especially working from home, not having colleagues, and when twitter is messing with me and putting my timeline all out of order (this doesn’t sound like a real problem, but it’s been going on for over a week and I just want to see all the tweets in reverse order IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK?)…and blogging makes me feel like there’s  a chance I’m not so unique, that my feelings are like other people’s. So tell me. How are you doing this holiday season?