2 Years On…

Hi!

I cannot believe that it has been 2 years since we packed up our little family and moved our home from Perth, Australia to Wellington, New Zealand! It seems like yesterday I was packing and unpacking boxes and saying hello again to a city we had left 10 years prior. Yet so much has happened in that time. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about my blog recently and what it means to me: Obviously I have been a very irregular blogger over the last year or so, and I have been trying to decide what I would like to do about that… I’ve been asking myself would I like to continue? Or would I just prefer to retire from blogging completely? Can I even justify to call myself a “Blogger” anymore?
I have also come to question why I began blogging in the first place and whether that reason still has any bearing…
In conclusion, I’m sure it’s not coincidence that I started blogging less once we moved to New Zealand.

Allow me explain and tell you a bit more of a story…

In past years writing my blog has been a very therapeutic outlet for me. What started on a whim 5 years ago, as a humble record of my experiments at sewing, soon became an almost daily record of life as I knew it. Over time my blog voice grew in confidence and connected me with new friends all over the world. Blogging and social media became a very important vice during what was in many ways the loneliest time in my life – because living in a country with very little family support, 2 young children close in age, and a husband working away for weeks at a time, was in a nutshell “character building”.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved my life, loved Australia, loved being a Mum to my two gorgeous angels, and always tried to make the best of every experience! But there is no denying I found that season of my life to be hard. Not even just hard, but exhausting to my very core.

2 years on I get exhausted just thinking back to how life was while the children were very small. I feel like I existed in survival mode, conserving every ounce of energy I could, as an insurance policy for next time anything went wrong, or someone got sick.
It sounds pretty miserable doesn’t it?

I don’t mean it to sound that way. Most of it wasn’t. Most of it was just part and parcel of being a Mum of young kids. Just that everything was magnified by having a distant family and working away husband.
Which is why my “blogging friends” and everybody who commented on my posts in support and encouragement, became such a vital part of that season in my life. It wasn’t the sole reason, but it became an extremely important one.
When I crumbled, you all helped me pick up the pieces.
You will never know quite how much of an impact on me you had, and how much I cherished your friendship.

So what does that have to do with now and why I stopped?

Well… In New Zealand life is different.
In New Zealand I have family – not even just a little bit of family – but a massive clan of crazy awesomeness.
To put that in perspective; on my Mother’s side alone, from my Nana and Granddad, down to their youngest great-grandchild, I think we are about to tip the 100 member mark. That’s just with Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles and Cousins!
And we are a close family.

Then there are my posse of girlfriends – the seriously amazing ladies that I went to school with and have been friends with since I was 4.

So over the last 2 years I have found myself conversing more and more locally.
Life has been hectic being a working mother, a wife, a daughter and a friend that there’s not much time left at the end of the day, and slowly I have drifted off my blog, off Facebook, off Flickr, off Instagram and I have had to focus my energy local.
{I had so much more time when I my children were younger, because they slept all day, and it was much more preferable for me to blog than to do housework! 😉 }

But don’t think that I’ve forgotten my “blogging friends”.
I haven’t at all!
I think of you all regularly, wonder what’s going on for you, and I miss the relationships with everyone.

I also miss having a voice.
Having an outlet… a space to air my thoughts.
A place to document my kids growing up.

Hmmm what does this all mean?

Well folks, I think I’m back…

Prepare yourselves to be bored senseless by what I’m about to say, because boy have I got a lot to tell you!!
I’ll be back tomorrow with the first instalment.