It may not seem like much, but these are the things that make me feel alive and rooted in something. These are the things that make me want to write.

I have been intensely stressed out, mostly in the name of bridesmaid dresses and perfect invitation wording and the outrageous cost of rented chairs. And planning to move. That too. We found a place that’s perfect for us, for now, adjacent to a beautiful park with a lake in the not-too-distant suburbs with more than twice as much space as we have now (Did you know that we’ve been living in a 480-square-foot apartment? I didn’t.), a den to use as  an office, and a private balcony with a view of trees and grass instead of a busy street. And — this was important — next spring, we can get a dog.

So I’m alive, and busy, and happy (if tense). And I’ve been thinking about writing, I swear: I even took a beautiful weekly photograph two weeks ago. I’m just a little wrapped up right now. It’ll pass.

Actually, I’m hoping you won’t hold me entirely responsible for this last lapse. I started to write something a week ago, but I didn’t have time to do much with it when the inspiration struck, and every time I sat down thereafter to work on it, I felt guilty about doing that instead of finishing the Get Rid of Things article I started a month ago or doing the final grading for my class. It was just an abnormally busy week, and when I can’t give my mind over to what I’m writing, the product usually isn’t worth reading.

I’m relatively relaxed at the moment, however, because Eric and I just returned home after a couple of days at his parents’ house, where we ate unlikely quantities of food, drank in surprising moderation, and played some silly games. The chief purpose of our visit, however, was this:

Audrey Doris. A girl baby. Her daddy is Eric’s youngest brother, Joe, and she is our very first niece. We have five nephews, so a baby with a bow on her head is a novelty.

Of course, it’s always nice to see Katie, too:

I love the weather; love its colors and textures, the sounds it makes, and how it changes the landscape. I love its force and changeability, and every time it does something awe-inspiring while I live in the city, I mourn our efforts to triumph over it. We see it coming, refuse to stay home in deference to it, and then clean up (or at least spoil) its effects within days if not hours. And in the city, the machinery of our lives — cars, buildings, billboards, stoplights, all of it — clutter the backdrop to the weather, uglifying and dulling our impression of it. A blizzard-struck street is by definition less vast and magnificent than a field or forest in the same conditions.

In the city, I have to grasp at my connection to the weather, consciously remind myself that what I’m looking at is breathtaking — or should be. And in the city, every time the weather stages a performance, I regret that I’m not watching from a better seat.

Jonathan’s offer was well-timed, though, because lately I’ve been thinking about doing something different with my blog. If you try to keep up with my writing, you’ve probably noticed that that’s become a much easier task over the past several months. There was a time when I wrote multiple blog posts a week, but that dwindled to once a week on average, and now…. Well, by now some of you probably wonder every time I write a post if it’s the last thing you’ll ever hear from me. The fact is, my underlying reasons for keeping a blog have shifted, but until now, I hadn’t changed my use of the space accordingly. What started as a way to strengthen my connection to a real-life community has evolved into the only connection, in some cases, that my friends and family have to my life. Moreover, my blog puts a face to the professional writing I do online. For both of these purposes, my old blog was not working. It wasn’t a professional-quality website, and a half-hearted post every two and a half weeks can’t give my distant friends and family much of a sense of what I’m experiencing.

That’s why, with this new blog, I will write more often. Promise. I have some partially-formed ideas that I think will lend an overall structure to my writing, motivate me to write more, and — I’m hoping — help me overcome this debilitating lack of inspiration I’ve been wrestling with. I can’t physically move out of the city now, so I’m going to try to move out of it in my head. More on that later.

For now, thanks for following me here. I’ll try to make it worth the effort.