I’ve been dragging my heels on writing this post for the past week. I set aside time to write it on Sunday morning, and even still, I found a thousand other things to do because I just didn’t want to write this. It’s conjuring up all kinds of feelings in me—excitement, fear, failure, sadness, relief.
Over the past few weeks, my busyness levels have been slowly creeping up. Busyness is sneaky, because it usually starts out slow with an extra commitment here and an extra task there. On top of what I normally do in a given week, I’ve noticed a significant drop in my energy levels (thanks, third trimester) at the same time that my commitments have increased. I said yes to too many writing projects, and I’ve also had baby showers to attend and baby clothes to sort and thank you notes to write and a nursery to finish. These are all very good things, things I’m grateful to have the opportunity to do. But I didn’t cut anything out to make room to do all this, and it left me feeling exhausted and stressed instead of joyful.
Over these past few weeks, I’ve felt like everything in my life is constantly halfway done, and I’m not really finishing anything. It feels like I have 12847 browser tabs open in my head, and I just need to close a few. It all came to a head when I found myself crying over little things that didn’t matter—a long line at the grocery store, an unexpected errand, an offhand comment. I think I cried every day last week, because of the hormones and stress and general feelings of “I can’t do it all.”
I’m finally ready to admit that I can’t do it all, not well, and not if I’m going to maintain any sanity. I was planning to take a maternity leave from my blog whenever the baby decides to come until I felt ready to start posting again. I really wanted to keep this leave as short as possible, blogging up until my due date and keeping up with life as usual. Blogging and writing are life-giving for me, and I didn’t want to give them up for any longer than I had to.
But in the recent busyness, blogging has become more of a burden than a joy, and I don’t want to lose my love for it. For the sake of my emotional well-being and stress levels, I need to press pause on the blog earlier than I expected. I’m not closing this space by any means—I’m really looking forward to getting back into it in a couple of months when I feel ready—but I’m letting go of my current calendar and expectations. I may post a few times in the coming months if I feel able, but I’m not going to force myself to write and create pinnable images for and promote three posts every week.
Ultimately, what I want is to create space for myself to breathe in these next few weeks leading up to Baby Bergman’s arrival. I don’t want to be so busy that I’m exhausted and death-crawling my way to the “finish line” of her delivery.
I want to savor every moment that is left of pregnancy, which has been a time of more joy than I could have possibly imagined.
I want to treasure every moment that is left of me and Dan just being me and Dan, husband and wife, not mom and dad.
I want to joyfully anticipate this baby’s arrival instead of worrying my way through the next four weeks.
I want to write to reflect on this special time, not just to create useable content.
I started this blog back in February, and I am so amazed by the community that has grown here since then. I am deeply grateful for every single person who has read these posts, written heartfelt comments, shared posts with friends and family on social media, and encouraged me to keep writing. It’s a joy to grow with you all, and I’m so excited to return to this place in a few months.
In the mean time, I’ll still be active on Instagram, and I’d love to stay connected to you all there until I’m back in this space. Thanks for all your love and support during this crazy, unique time.
