80/90, that damn journal

I have taken a break from my journal. For the entire semester. I don't know how it started. I know that I started feeling sick about it by the end of January. I started for a few days, looked at what I was tracking about my life, and felt sick.

I am not unhappy. I am a bit worse for wear, a bit more confused about my life, but I am not unhappy. And for some reason, all I write about are the depressing bits. All I write down are the times when I'm broken and alone, reflecting on the pieces of the semester that damaged me instead of the parts that built me up.

So I decided to make an official break. I stopped writing in the journal. I kept going on the blog, but lets be honest: I'm not creating. I'm blogging my life, and I'm loving it, but I'm anxious to get back to the creative projects I hesitate to write here, the real pieces that make me feel whole.

It's almost that time, graduation and real life. For over a month now, I've been chomping at that bit, stomping and anxious to tear out of the semester's confinement and write again. I've been scribbling notes and narratives and sources to research and connections. I've been digging into the history of my genre, this "new" fourth kind of writing, the growing fourth genre. I've been asking myself if I'm writing prose, what that means, what I'm writing if it's not that.

To sort myself out, I've undertaken this huge blog-switch project. I've been trying to figure out, since becoming engaged, how my name change would work with my Web presence. I was going to keep myself a Veit in the blogosphere and social media arena. I've since changed my mind.

Now, I'm building all of my sites with the name "Betz," even though I'm a bit concerned that this will somehow jinx me (what with it not being my legal name yet). I'm researching how to use two blogs effectively--one for me and Joe, one for my continuing education and passion for writing. I'm designing and redesigning and still not writing in my journal...

But I can't wait for this summer! I know that this is all over the place, but the goal is to have both blogs running... a new wordpress and la francofile, so that people can select the narratives the want to follow... and then I'll have my journal–my poor, neglected best friend–to start my creative nonfiction journal.

I feel so good about my writing life right now, and it's flooding over to the rest of my life. I feel like I can learn French. I feel like I can get a job or find freelance work to keep myself busy (and fed). I feel like Joe and I will be an outstanding, happy, focused-but-flexible family. I can't wait to share it with you.