That happened fast. I blinked and suddenly, it’s been three months since I posted here.

I can place 90% of the blame for my time away on grad school. But every time I get to study an advertising principle or write a paper defending the practice of social media marketing with scholarly sources and all, I feel thankful and in place. The school opportunity is both enlightening and overwhelming at times. It can make me both wiser and busier. I kept a place for and therefore kept up with Bible studying and book reading in that time, just not blog posting. Or much cooking. Or well-organized brunch dates. What I’ve missed the most out of those three is the blog posting. I’ve really, really missed writing here.

I consider it a gift to have a bit of temporary time and space for leisure writing again. To have the realization of how much I missed it is a gift, too. It’s shown me once again how much writing means to me. I’ve been living and moving through my life’s windy yet steady season, experiencing these odd side effects called feelings, breathing in the air of each new day and its new lessons and haven’t written about any of it. As one of my favorite quotes by Flannery O’Connor says, “I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.”

I’ve felt the weight of the words knocking around in my head as I go through the motions of life, as if I’m not a writer who has always needed to internally process and then empty out through the written word. I’ve held in my heart and mind what would possibly be useful and maybe even beautiful if breathed out onto a page.

Writing, for me, is the freedom to document, process, and teach what the years are teaching me. It’s the difference between racing life and stopping to dance with it. To write is to be the lightest, most genuine version of myself where I’m basking in introspection and not continuously piling on the weight of experiences unprocessed or stories untold.

It can take the form of a private journal, a notepad of thoughts, and I fondly remember when it took the form of a drawer full of glitter covered diaries complete with a lock and key. In year 25, writing looks like a journal of Bible and book notes, prayers, and free-writes for every time a pesky emotion pops up (I’m learning not to always ignore those). It also looks like this blog. Writing, for me, simply has to look like something. It can’t look like nothing. The words are just too heavy.