26 Hours in the Day

I was commiserating with a friend recently about busy-ness and how hard it is to get everything done in a day, and she suggested it would just take another two hours per day and we’d be able to get completely caught up. I know she and I are not alone in that feeling. It seems like modern life conspires to make us all feel perpetually behind.

On that note, I want to apologize to any of you who have wondered what happened to Mulberry Jam during the past six weeks. I’ve been ashamed at my neglect of the site. After developing a pretty regular rhythm in the first three months of this year when I was posting about three times per week, I dropped it entirely during April. Not a single new post. I regret that this happened just about the time when I had gained a few readers other than my mom and my husband, my original faithful supporters.

My going AWOL is because of good changes that have been happening in my life, but the changes have kept me so busy I found myself without that extra hour or two to spare for my musings. First, my freelance writing has taken off to the point where I’m finally getting steady work that’s keeping me busy on a regular basis. Nothing glamorous, mind you. No cover story sold to a national magazine yet, but you have to start somewhere, and I’m very happy to be getting paid for my words.

Another big change is that I’m a student again, sixteen years after I last left higher education. In March I began a program that will culminate in certification to teach yoga at the end of this year. I now have coursework, reading, a study group to participate in, and a whole new set of demands on my time. I’m finding it exhilarating to feel like a complete novice at something. I feel younger somehow just because I have homework again!

And then there’s the garden. Spring is, of course, the big season for garden labor. Here in Washington we’re enjoying an unusually temperate spring with day after day of brilliant sunny weather in the sixties and seventies. This is far from our normal pattern, where the temperatures will shift suddenly and irreversibly from highs in the forties to highs in the eighties in the span of a week. I’ve enjoyed being out among all my flowers and vegetables, getting my hands dirty and reconnecting with the plants I’ve put in place over the past twelve years in this house.

The advantage is that now I have a big backlog of ideas and topics to write about. I may still struggle occasionally, and posts may be brief at times, but I’m rededicating myself to post as regularly as possible. Please be kind enough to check back once or twice a week, and I promise you’ll have something new to look at. And I hope you’ve all been out enjoying the spring yourselves!