Admittedly, I’ve lost track how many “I’m returning to writing” posts I’ve made. Or, a more accurate depiction: “returning to publicly visible writing.”

My exits have never been planned. They’ve all presented the same way. My cadence of posting slows. My inner critic grows. Then I fade away, erasing every last trace of my soul’s stirrings. I haven’t fully examined the reasoning behind this pattern. Perhaps leaving fragments of my work living in deserted corners of the internet feels more like evidence of failure than removing any indications that I’d ever tried at all.

I’m no stranger to the classic tagline of every addictive cycle, “But this time will be different…”

• that rocky relationship that feels impossible to escape
• strict diet rules that are sustainable for maybe a week, tops
• taking a pause from a no-spend period because a deal is just too good to pass up
• breaking sobriety for a celebratory sip or hit that definitely won’t spiral into something else…

I’m going to succumb to the same shrinking pattern, I know it.

If I start this with the mentality that this blog could meet the same fate as its predecessors, then why waste anyone’s time? Why take up anyone’s space? Why spark any new hope?

Maybe I haven’t fully given up on myself. Not yet.

Now, there’s a quote commonly (but possibly inaccurately) attributed to Einstein that goes a little like,

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

– Someone, potentially Einstein

Regardless of who said this, or how they actually said it, the notion remains. And this sentiment guides many of my actions.

If I don’t do something different, I’ll keep repeating the cycle.

So what promises that this time is unlike the rest?

• Pieces here will be purpose-driven instead of performatively seeking to please people —
  • SEO and platform-building can take a backseat.
• An ever-evolving author who isn’t the same person she was back then, nor whomever she may be in the future —
  • different person, different pattern, right?
• As begrudgingly agreed to at my therapist’s request, this blog will be allowed to live forever in the ether, even if I walk away at some point —
  • Regardless of where this path leads, I accept the vulnerability of preserving moments or memories shared with any who come across my writing, rather than shamefully pretending they never happened.

As someone who will spend hours writing pages, only to compulsively delete every last one before closing my laptop, this last point will be the hardest to uphold. Like the overgrown hydrangeas I stopped tending, the soccer cleats I set aside after fears of incurring another concussion, or the flash drive in my barren bottom drawer holding the unpublished novel I wrote fourteen years ago … My stagnant or abandoned blogs haunted me as reminders of failure to follow-through.

But as my work in trauma therapy has taught me, convictions can be challenged, beliefs can be rewritten, and even the most seemingly concrete cycles can be broken. This, right now, is my attempt to do that.

Thanks for giving me the space and grace to do so.

I do hope you stay a while.