I’m about 1/3 the way through December and pausing to write this because I need to do it right now or it will simply be another blog post that I’ve thought about and haven’t written.

I haven’t really looked at my inbox since December 1st, 2009.

No, really.  From December 1st through today, January 25th, I have let everything in my online life pretty much do the metaphoric equivalent of “Go To Voicemail.”  I didn’t even know I was capable of doing that.

What happened?

Oh, I suppose I could say it was a combination of seasonal depression, a series of disappointing revelations about other people and relationships, the feeling that somehow I failed miserably at my last job, and a dozen other issues piled one on top of the other until it just snowballed into me ‘checking out.’

But the end result was pretty much that I hit a level of apathy and depression that let me just walk away.

The thing is – it’s this horrible spiral.  You don’t let people know that it’s not just their emails you aren’t answering because you’re not seeing those emails at all.  And they start to think there’s something wrong that is specific to them.  Then there are repercussions.

Too many things fall through the cracks.  You realize even from a huge emotional distance that there are probably things sitting in your inbox that are long past the point of “easy fixes” so you just avoid the inbox with more determination than ever and more things & people fall through the cracks.

I’ve never really experienced this sort of thing before.

I’ve been wired for so many years that it’s second nature to me to open up the computer and close out the rest of the world when I’m withdrawing into myself… In the past, it was phone calls, social events, and in person contact that fell by the wayside.  I’ve never just ignored my email for weeks.

Then there’s the blog thing.

Oh, the blog thing.

It’s another “I just can’t face it today, I’ll try again tomorrow” area.  Why?  In my head, blogging but ignoring email is sort of the same as not showing up for work, not calling, not explaining why – but sitting in the coffee shop in the lobby of the building where you work pretending that there’s nothing out of the ordinary.

How could I write here when there are people who have sent me dozens of emails without so much as a “Lucretia is out of the universe right now, please leave a message at the sound of the beep and she’ll get back to you when she stops spiraling out of control” response?

So no email, no blogging. What else fell into the apathy well?

Twitter.  Meaningful interactions online.  Work.  Projects I’d committed myself to but haven’t even touched.  Pretty much everything that had to do with the computer except, oddly, mindless Facebook games.  Oddly, if it was something that consisted of repetition without strategy or conversation, I’ve been fanatical about it.  Given that I’m usually attracted to the opposite, I’m still trying to figure that one out.

What didn’t fall into the well?

My family.  My daughter and my husband – and a number of my extended family.  A few good friends.  Getting up out of bed, eating, getting through the bits of the day that are really necessary if you’re not going to live in a dark closet.

What a switch that is, I tell you.  As far back as I can recall, when I’ve had to drop some of the balls we all juggle in life, work, family and everything else, I’d retreat into either books or my online world.  Then again, those were usually much shorter periods of time.  A few days, a couple of weeks.  Never before has it been quite this extended.

But today I’m unleashing my secret weapon against my own apathy & depression: anxiety.

No really.  It turns out that if you let anxiety out of the box you’ve been stuffing it into for so many years you find that a good, solid panic attack can do wonders toward getting you back in the game.

I say this because I’m at 1443 unread and working my way down.  I’m deleting outright the things that I know don’t need my time… I’m letting myself know that I have to face the music in a lot of cases and that some of the things that fell through the cracks will be unrecoverable.  I’m using fear of what happens if I don’t do it nownownow outweigh the wall of apathy that has let me pretend that I’d “start doing things right tomorrow” only to ignore it again.

I’m not sure what that means for this blog, honestly.  I really have a lot of stuff I want to write about – just as soon as I take care of the things that I absolutely must address first.  But here? I’m not sure.  I’ve clearly got some stuff to work out in my life before this ball can definitely be picked up and put back in the ones that I’m keeping in the air right now.

But at the moment, I have to get back to that inbox.  Those 1443 unread emails are not going to magically disappear if I don’t.  And I want my online life back.  So first things first.

If you’re reading this and you’ve emailed me since December 1st? I apologize – expect to hear from me shortly, part of which will include a personal apology.  And thanks for bearing with me long enough to read this despite my resounding silence in the other arena.

If you’re reading this and you want to email me? Can you hold off a bit?  I promise not to make you listen to nasty, homogenized, crackly hold music if you can’t – but I’m not promising I won’t hum ‘Girl From Ipanema‘ if you insist on hanging on the line.

I didn’t really know how to answer that. I mean, the last time I actually updated this blog was back in *cough* June.

It’s not that I didn’t think  about writing.  I did.  I thought about it hard every night as I fell asleep exhausted.  It turns out that being a full-time mom and working for a startup is harder than it sounds. 

My daughter was home all summer and yet, there were still things that had to be done.  So of course, something had to give — unfortunately, in my case it meant writing on my blog. 

But my little Buttercup went back to school at the end of last month, so I really have no excuse not to get back into blogging.  Except for that part where I’m still presently working for a startup.  It’s amazing how “spare time” becomes “not a second to spare” in that case.  I kind of forgot.  But then, the last startup I worked for was pre-kidlet.  Sheesh.  A lifetime ago!  That would’ve been 2001!! Whoa.

Still, there are some many things I do want to write about and share with y’all.  So I’m going to have to just make the time, huh?

Much travel coming up.  As usual? I’ll bring my camera and it will live in my suitcase.  Good thing I’ve got an iphone now and can embed Whrrl stories in my blog!! 

Whrrl ? Oh, you’ll see… they’re my favorite obsession of late.  You know how I was talking about Twitter back in 2007 and y’all thought I was crazy?  Yeah, well… if you’re not using Whrrl by 2011 I’ll be surprised.

Check it out.  Pretty awesome.  I think hey deserve a full write up of their own.  Aha! Something to write about this weekend!

This Whrrl story was created by me and some of the Whrrl guys and friends out in Detroit at the MARS home office.  We were there for a visit.  What an awesome day! Wish you could’ve been there with me, but this is the next best thing!

I just, apparently, am in over my head right now!

I’m in Chicago for SOBCon.  I just left Cleveland where I was for the Stouffer’s Blogger Round Table event #LetsFixDinner.  I will be in Arkansas on Monday next week for Mind of Moms.  I should be home some day Wednesday.

Between now and then it is my intention to *try* and get up to date (partially) as I have some amazing stuff just sitting here in my head (and half-written on my hard drive) that I really want to share with you all.

But I’m brain dead and going to sleep to get up in 4 hrs to finish some overdue work before I have to leave this hotel in the a.m. and go check into another one.

Can someone please send me a couple of clones to get these posts up? No? Okay, how about just some people better at posting about why they haven’t been posting lately?

Yeah, I know, ever the optimist!

Bit of administrative stuff before I close laptop and crash?

Congrats to Alba Geuvara whos tip “@GeekMommy My Green Tip is for everyone to convert to using kitchen towels instead of paper towels#11MOMSGREEN #GMContest was randomly chosen from all valid entries for the Earth Day contest for a Brita Water Pitcher.

Thank everyone. More soon. Promise.  And also promise it won’t be another “why I haven’t posted” post.  I don’t have time for any more of these!

G’night!

But who’s counting aside from me?

The rest of you are busy counting your own minutes and obligations, I expect.  Time doesn’t wait for intentions.  You’ve probably been surging right along getting your own ducks quacking in a row rather than wondering why the sudden surge of noise from this corner.

For me – 4 out of 6 makes for a fabulous day.

Altogether too often, I’ve been batting zero time and time again.  I wake up, tell myself today’s the day I’ll get it all done annnnnnnd go to bed at last convincing myself that tomorrow will be different.

Because I’ve been so social by necessity of late – I kind of missed the signs.  It is, after all, more than likely that I’ve been suffering from a deep bout of Seasonal Depression.  It wouldn’t be the first time.  It would only be the first time that it took me this long to identify it.  My seasonal depression isn’t the same as my usual depression.  It’s not like snow and gloom make me all full of self-doubt.  It’s that I get maudlin and melancholy and reminisce and dream too much – and the normal stuff that makes up each day keeps getting buried into this dark hole that I keep digging for it.  Sooner or later, too much stuff piles up and I realize I’m down there with it… and that the only way out is to cut steps into the walls and haul all of that stuff out, load by load, and take care of it in the sunshine.

So I’m doing it. I’m cutting steps, dredging out unintentionally buried things & trying to set everything right.

If you want a perkier metaphor you can say that I’m working in my garden while it’s still cold and icy so that things bloom when they’re supposed to.

I really want to type “No More Excuses!” here and mean it.  But that one is a bit too heavy to drag up just now… So I guess I’ll stick with “I’m doing better already… I only have to keep it up!”

If for some reason you’re reading this and wondering why I haven’t posted that story you were expecting me to? Take a couple minutes and email me.  Give me a chance to see which crack it fell through and how we can breathe new life into it.

I’m breathing new life into me… I can certainly do that for my blog!

]]> http://geekmommy.net/2009/03/31/cutting-steps-in-the-wall-of-the-hole/feed/ 3 http://geekmommy.net/2008/12/23/house-cleaning-post/ http://geekmommy.net/2008/12/23/house-cleaning-post/#comments Tue, 23 Dec 2008 22:24:47 +0000 GeekMommy http://geekmommy.net/?p=365 Ew. Things have been getting a bit dusty around here of late.

I suppose that happens when I ignore blogging in favor of Twitter, Facebook, and anything else I can do instead of writing my blog posts.  It starts getting old and musty.

So time for a bit of quick house-cleaning – and then? Then I have a really cool surprise! The post right after this one? Is a guest post by one of the most amazing women I’ve had the privilege to meet – Wendy Piersall, founder of Sparkplugging.com and Social Media maven!

But first? The house-cleaning.

Contest Results

The winner of the Nickelodeon Giveaway for a $500 Walmart Gift Card was Grace from http://www.mammainthescene.com – her entry was chosen from all of the valid entries by the random number generator at random.org.

Thank you for all of you that entered and spread the word.  I know there will be other opportunities in the new year for folks to win similar stuff.  I’ll let you know.  Agains, congratulations to Grace!

Favorite Entry

I prefer to do random number contests because it keeps me from second-guessing my own biases all the time – but I do just have to share with you all this one entry.  If I’d been judging entries based on the one that stayed with me most (yes, I actually did read all of those great tips!) this would be the one that I’d have to choose – given how much it has stuck with me since I read it.

Donna Holmberg on December 14th, 2008 9:54 pm

Donna? Thank you!! That is just an amazing idea and one I think I’ll be finding a way to implement myself around here next year.  I think my circle of Mom friends will be enthusiastic as well!!

Upcoming Events 2009

In case I haven’t yet mentioned it enough yet? In just a couple of weeks I get the privilege of joining some amazing folks to speak at the first Women in Web 2.0 conference of 2009 – Chicks Who Click – in Boulder January 9th & 10th.  If you aren’t already planning on attending and can? I totally advise it.  I’m really looking forward myself to seeing and learning from some of my fellow speakers there.  Did I mention there was skiing, cocktails and networking as well? Yeah!! Hope to see you there!

I will also be attending South by SouthWest Interactive this year from March 13-17th if you happen to be there.

I’m trying hard to get to SOBCon in Chicago May 1-3rd as well, I’ll update you as soon as I know on that! If you’ve already gotten your ticket? I’m jealous!

And as usual, I’ll be at BlogHer in Chicago July 23-25th so it looks like I’ll get to Chicago more than once this year if I can make the numbers work!!

More as they happen!!

Last Little Bit of Tidying

Part of my New Year’s Resolutions this year (yes, there will be a post) is that I’m going to rebalance things.  It’s time that I refocused my energy on this blog and scaled back a bit on other social networks. Twitter is my addiction, but I looked at my lack of updates this year and realized that it’s been taking too much time away from my blogging… So that will be changing.  More on that soon.  But that’s the good part – there will be MORE of that soon!

Now, on to the absolutely rockin’ guest post by Wendy!