Hi Ether. Did you miss me? (aka: oh my gosh, it's one in the morning!)

I spent more time today poking here and there in my old LiveJournal, which I started in 2003, and wrote in, religiously sometimes up to 7 times per day until 2009 with titles like, “If I could wear my iPod in the tub, I'd be in heaven,” “I wish I could spread my happy chemicals to all of you,” "My life is dull but I don't care because I'm going to sleep soon," & "If you see latex balloons and piles of sticks in the yard, you'll know he already started," and the periodic girls-only posts where I discussed things like lingere, sex, birth control, periods, my feelings about my body and found a (mostly) safe place to talk about my struggles with my marriage.

But there was more to my journal. I took pictures of the everyday. I marveled in the growing-up of my children. I shared my pregnancy with my readers, detailing belly pictures (that I took myself in my kitchen mirror), confided frustrations, and published my lists of to-dos I'd create for myself to achieve all of my ambitious goals. I made friends, lifelong friends. I let myself hang out, faults and all, and found myself accepted anyway.

In skimming just through some of 2004, I was struck by how all these entries seemed to serve as a safety valve for everything inside me. I keenly feel the lack of such a valve. Later I started a business, experienced several life-changing events in a row, and knew instinctively to pull inside. The internet loves a good story but it is not always understanding of you while you are in the middle of a good story. You aren't allowed to make mistakes, struggle, or change. At least I felt that way. I didn't want the world to pop popcorn and watch my life explode. Maybe I was a train wreck but I knew enough to not let anyone watch, even if my ratings would have been stellar. In the course of my business, I also found out that not everyone on the internet was a nice person, and they would use any vulnerability or personal angle I shared against me.

Then over a year ago, I found myself in my parents' kitchen, doing spreadsheets with my dad, reevaluating and redesigning every aspect of our business plan. I needed to focus and I needed to concentrate, and I needed to not whine about it on the internet.

So I quit writing.

The last year of my life has been just nonstop work. I have been working pretty much in almost all my spare time. I am amazed I have any friends at all, honestly. I still am constantly having to turn down social events, skip parties due to work exhaustion, decline invitations, because my life is work. When I am not working I am with my children or Ryan.

All that work paid off. My business is in a good place. All businesses are tricky endeavors, and mine is no different, but we have found some kind of even keel, and while we are constantly tweaking the plan, we have things humming and running in a way that seems to be working. I could not have done it without the help of my dad or the people who I work with, but if I hadn't dragged my ass to work at 6 a.m. for months and months, and worked 12, 14, 18 hour days for months, it wouldn't have mattered how much peripheral support I had — we would not have succeeded. I am proud of myself, and I am proud of everyone who works with and for me. So now I am finding myself very pent up with all the words. I've always had a lot of them, and in my LiveJournal I found a place to put them.

I miss writing. I miss letting the energy inside me out in a creative and productive way. I have all these dumb thinky thoughts and I like writing them down. I miss it. I'm coming back. I don't know what this means, really, because I still know that dropping privacy means making myself vulnerable. But maybe no one cares and I can just write to the ether. I miss that too.

But if you are here, I welcome you as well.

Now I need to find my wordpress password.