Fiji

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…

 

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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. IMG_2536I 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.

 

Blog ending

 

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  1. Kat, this post makes me happy in so many ways. I look forward to your return to blogging, but even more so I am so happy that you’ve reconnectedwith local friends and are around your family! Having been gone from my family and childhood home for 14 years now, with lots of relocating, I treasure my blogging friends as well, but do hope that someday I’ll get to settle in a place where I can just absorb local life! It is a wonderful age we live in, where we can connect with others around the globe, but nothing quite compares to having true friends and family by your side! Anxiously looking forward to your next post! xx

  2. I have thought of you so often since you moved back home. I am so so happy to hear that the reasons you drifted from blogging were such good ones 🙂 While your presence has definitely been missed, cherishing IRL relationships is so vital! Welcome back and I can’t wait to hear what you’ve been up to 🙂

  3. I just started following you after completing one of your sewing tutorials. As I was reading this, I was in Oh-No! mode but by the end I was in Yipee mode. 🙂

  4. Welcome back Kat! It’s so wonderful that you’re back to being close to all of your family (family by choice & born-into family), but I am selfishly glad that you’re going to be blogging again to the rest of us. 😉

    Big hugs!

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