Coffee Chat // June 25, 2014

1. Here we go again... Remember how I announced that Mark was going to be sent to Israel for a few months for work and then told you I was just kidding about that because his company nixed that part of the project? Well, I was just kidding about just kidding! The project is back on, and Mark was given a three-week notice that he'll be leaving for Israel for three months. Welcome to my life, where I have literally no idea where my husband will be two weeks from any given date. Over the course of May and June, he's been on business trips to Portland, Israel, and Phoenix, and we've seen each other for a total of three days over a three-week period. We're not sure yet whether or not I'll be visiting Israel while he's there. {UPDATE: Have you seen the news lately? Ugh, awful. I will not be visiting, and I will be hoping and wishing with all the bones in my body that Mark's company will call him back home given the violence and unrest. Otherwise, it will be a very long and stressful three months.}

2. Israel-travel aside, I am super excited because my mom has booked a two-week family vacation to visit Austria, Germany, and Switzerland in September! As a family, we've never traveled much farther than northern Wisconsin together, and my mom has been talking about wanting to go to Europe with us since my brother and I graduated college. It only took us about five years to coordinate our schedules. I've been to a few of the cities before, but I'm excited to see more of these countries and to be able to celebrate Mark's and my sixth wedding anniversary in another country! As I think about the trip, I'm contemplating filming a travel vlog on my DSLR in lieu of taking pictures (especially since my mom will already be taking a ton of photos and is a pretty good photographer).

3. Speaking of vlogs, some of you might remember that I mentioned a while back about starting a book-focused YouTube channel. I haven't abandoned this idea at all, but getting the project rolling has not been without challenges. My camera fell off my tripod and broke the lens while I was filming the intro, and then I discovered my in-camera audio is pretty piss-poor, so I'm on the hunt for a microphone. But we're getting closer, people! I'm not being a total perfectionist about this whole thing, but I do want it to not totally suck, ya know? I did create a cute little banner this week, so at least that's something :)

4. My poor Cancer Cat is going in for a second surgery next week, so keep us in your thoughts! She's basically fine aside from an awful tumor that keeps growing back, and the only way to (potentially) make it go away permanently would be a 30-day course of daily radiation at a clinic an hour away from home costing an estimated $10,000-12,000. Misfit, I'm sorry and I love you, but no. So the best we can do is surgically remove the mass again and hope that the cancer is slow to spread into the rest of her body. We likely don't have too many more months left with her :(

5. I came very close to deleting my blog this month. It almost feels like a cliche at this point to talk about this as a personal blogger (and I've already discussed it in the past), but the feelings are real, however unoriginal. On an individual level, I'm not sure if the energy it takes is worth it. What's the purpose of it for me, what am I building? If it is merely a creative outlet, is that the best use of my time? (Creative expression feels oddly selfish and pointless to me lately.) If it's just a journal or place to practice writing, why not keep it private? On a more social level, I'm just not that into the blog world lately. So much of what I see online is either aspirational (lifestyle blogs that are so focused on outward appearances, aesthetics, and consumption/consumerism that they feel materialistic and staged) or motivational (life-coach-y, "ten tips to be a better human!" type of blogs, which I just find  impersonal and reductive). I crave realness, stories, emotion, and getting beyond the surface-level, even if it isn't always picture perfect or wrapped up as a neat little life lesson—and how do I find more of this? For now, I will keep on keeping on—I recognize that often what we seek and desire is something to be found within, pointing to action that we need to take on our own rather than pointing fingers at external forces. I will try to write more from the heart myself, and work a little harder to find more personal bloggers to connect with. I'll admit—it's a challenge for me to both focus on creating my own honest content (blog writing or otherwise) and carve my own path, while still wanting to be a part of something larger and foster community. They feel like opposing forces sometimes.