I’ve blogged through a few life transitions. Graduating high school. Graduating college. Getting married. Getting my first full-time job. Blogging has been my main creative outlet basically through my entire transition to adulthood. A lot of my other interests have fluctuated, but books and blogs have remained constant. No matter what I’ve been doing, I’ve been able to write thoughtfully about things that are important to me. However, since I took on a new role at work about nine months ago, I’ve realized my well of creativity (and honestly my mental capacity) isn’t limitless. It has a limit, and I mostly use it up at work. I love my job, and I realize how blessed I am to be in a role where I can be creative and am invested in the work I’m doing. But it has been a challenge to figure out how to blog when I only have 10% brain left at the end of the day.

I’m still following politics and social issues closely, but I find myself wanting to add to the conversation less and less. It’s partly that I don’t want to make a fool of myself, and partly that politics and society are just exhausting. Lately I’ve found myself just wanting to write about what my life is like right now. I’ve been married for a over a year, and we’re still figuring out how to live with each other. I’m personally invested in my work, and I’d like to talk about that (although boundaries are a bit trickier there). I want to talk about getting ready to buy a house, and how hard it is to make friends, and how we’re actually getting decent at cooking. And honestly, that’s all my brain can really do at the end of the day anyway. So, here it is: what I’ve been up to since early fall, which was the last time I posted something that wasn’t just book-related.

Goals

Above I mentioned we’re getting ready to buy a house. We’ve been saving up a down payment since we moved in together in May 2017, and we are finally where we want to be. Once end-of-year bonuses and tax returns go through, we’ll be able to apply for a mortgage. You know how people get baby fever? We both have house fever. Our Sunday ritual is going to open houses to figure out what area we want to be in.

Also, exercising is less of a concrete goal for me and more of a “I must move my body after work or I’ll go insane” type thing, but I’ve been consistently following Yoga with Adriene videos on YouTube for several months now. You can get such a good workout in in just 20 minutes, and her philosophy is helpful when it bleeds over into regular life, too.

Work

I may have mentioned it before, but I do marketing for a mid-size financial institution. As of this week, I just finished my first big project: we updated our website for the first time since like 2008. Now it’s beautiful, mobile-responsive, and I couldn’t be more excited. Next I’m immediately starting my second project: implementing a financial counseling and education program. And all that is on top of my regularly scheduled tasks, like producing a quarterly newsletter, creating advertising campaigns, and handling our sponsorships and events. It’s a lot of different things at once, and I love it. (You know, not every second of every day, but in general.)

Obssesively Binge-Watching

• Brooklyn Nine Nine – freaking hilarious. I have literally laughed out loud for every single episode. I know we’re late to the party, but this is definitely a case of better late than never.
• A Series of Unfortunate Events – So quirky. So visually pleasing. Such good acting. I only read through the 4th book as a kid, but it seems to be a great and accurate book-to-TV adaptation.
• House Hunters – Because obviously. We’d be watching this even if we weren’t getting ready to buy a house ourselves. We’re officially old.

Reading & Listening

• Ask A Manager – Invaluable advice, especially for someone in her first real job. Also some situations to entertain you, because who does this stuff??? (She also has a podcast that’s pretty good.)
• The Argument – This is a podcast by three writers from the NYT. One leans aggressively left, one leans aggressively right, and one is more of a centrist with a left bent. They get together and discuss different current events from their political perspectives.
• Regular books as usual – January has been of a book bust for me, but I’ll have a review post going up in a few days.

Has anyone else gone through a weird blog content transition? Any tips for talking about work on your personal blog?