Because a handful of people actually inquired as to my hiatus, to ask if I was ok or if life was ok.

The internet is a wonderful and terrible place. It is what you make of it and sometimes you can make too much of it. Especially when it comes to social interaction. 

I have spent too much time focusing on my online life instead of my offline life. I have invested way too much of mine and my family’s time sitting in front of this computer looking for validation that I should have been seeking elsewhere, mostly from within myself. I have used this as a means to escape, to withdraw, to avoid and to mistakenly build up my self worth. 

January 2012 would mark 11 years that I have been blogging in some form or other. It seems for whatever reason that the tumblr portion of that blogging has taken on a life of its own. Or, I let it take over my life. 

I’ve put things on hold. I let important conversations go unspoken and important words unlistened to. I let time slip away. I looked for things here that were right in front of me. I let too many things go, too many moments not happen. Tumblr and blogging in general have been my crutch. “I’m just writing. I’m just honing my skills. Building up writing clips. Networking.” Bullshit. I was avoiding things. I was wasting time. 

I know this is not the case for everyone and most people don’t have addictive personalities combined with other issues that make something that should be inconsequential - like tumblr and the internet in general - become their lives. 

I don’t need you to tell me I’m a good writer. I don’t need you to tell me I’m a good person or a good mother or that I’m funny or pretty or interesting. I don’t need to come on here day after day looking for those hearts and replies. I need to look in front of me. I need to focus on my life that is happening offline because otherwise I not only stand the chance of losing that but I miss the cues that things aren’t as perfect as I imagine them in my unfocused mind.

I’ve enjoyed my time with this. I’ve gotten a lot of out it. But I put way too much of me into it and that didn’t leave enough of me to go around.

It’s time to refocus.

It’s pretty likely I won’t be back here again. I’ll go back to twitter after a short break because that’s less all consuming and really, I need somewhere to tell all my tampon jokes.

But life is happening before my eyes - good things and not so good things - and not only am I missing out on the good but if I keep doing this I’ll keep missing out on the chance to fix the things that aren’t so good.

You’ve been good to me, tumblr folks. Thank you. For all of it.

So long and thanks for all the fish, as the kids say.