I am starting my 9th year of blogging as Alphabet Resolutions. I can’t believe it has been almost a decade of doing this! And to be honest, I almost stopped with year 8. I very seriously considered shutting this whole thing down, and I’m going to talk about that a bit today before I jump into my year of “J” later this month…

Toward the end of 2022, I wrote about the shame of the backslide

… but one of the subjects I didn’t address in that post was the frustration I felt at what I considered another failure- the times I missed my planned weekly post on this blog. I have worked really hard to be consistent with my posting over the past few years, aside from the annual break I take during one of the summer months to focus on my kids and their summer break. The perfectionist in me said “this is a sign you are done. If you are missing posts then maybe you should just stop and move on.” Maybe this phase of my life WILL wrap up soon- I am feeling the weight of how much time and thought it takes to maintain this blog, and on top of that, I got an email telling me that, like everything else these days, the cost of keeping this domain name is going up, and I’m just not making the affiliate income to cover that (though to be honest that is to be expected, I am VERY picky about recommending anything and I am not interested in SEO work as this is very much a personal blog not a future business or major revenue stream.) But at what point is it no longer worth it to lose money on this blog and at what point do I call it a day and spend my time elsewhere?

“Is this worth it?”

That very phrase it actually what stopped me from making such a rash decision to call it quits on the blog. It was the same phrase I asked myself when the goal of getting a minimum number of kids sponsored for my partnership with World Vision for the NYC Marathon seemed utterly impossible. You know what I thought of then? I thought of the story of Abraham bargaining with God about sparing Sodom for the sake of the righteous there. Abraham starts by asking God if he would spare the city for the sake of 50 righteous people, and by the end he is talking about just 5 righteous people. I told myself, if I could even get 1/10 of my goal I’d consider it a huge impact and success. I definitely surpassed that benchmark and many kids have better lives now because of it.

So now I’m thinking about that when it comes to my hopes and goals for this year of blogging as well. Maybe I don’t get 52 posts published this year, but I can surely get more than five or six up. And maybe someone’s life will be better for it.

So I’m still here blogging… for now. But here are a few changes for this year:

Last year I started to feel like I was spreading myself thin- aside from this blog, I am also writing for Phoenix Moms PLUS  all the microblogging I do on my instagram page and I feel like all this means I am in danger of burning out. PLUS I really miss more private writing and am feeling called to be a bit more reflective and inwardly focused this year. I foresee a return to journaling just for me, maybe doing some morning pages and some scripture journaling- all of it offline to start my day.

So Journaling is one of my J themes for the year, but it is kind of the antithesis of getting on here to blog. Maybe it will pop up in a post now and again, but I’m just not sure. All that means I will be writing less in this space. I am going to make it a goal to write once a month here instead of once a week. I will also be posting once a month over on Phoenix moms so that’s still every other week filled with writing from me if you really want it that often. (And I will write one more time this first month of the year just to get my themes for the year out into the world! But consider that the definite exception, not the rule!)

Also, the posts I do write once a month will be a lot less of the recap/general goals posts you used to see from me once a month. I am sure aspects of my goals for the year and how I’m using my Powersheets will still come up, but I am feeling pulled to be a bit more private in my tending lists and goals, and feeling like some of my goals for this year will flourish more if they aren’t shared to the general public but remain a quiet practice just for me or me and my immediate community. I am hoping my posts here will still be helpful if they are a bit less focused on what I’m DOING and stay a bit more focused on what I am LEARNING or THINKING about.

I am also going to just try and put a lot less pressure on myself. That means not every post will have a featured image (which adds a lot of time to the process) or have a lot of the other little things that add up to a lot of time.

All of this could change as the year goes on, but this is what I need for right now, and I’m hoping this will keep me from burning out and allow me to want to continue writing- hopefully all the way to the end of the alphabet! But for now, I’m just taking it one post at a time, and hopefully this one gives you a better idea of what to expect for 2023.