A few years ago I had a blog. A fun blog. It was called “p.s. love.love.” and it embodied my everyday life as a mom, wife, aunt, health coach, teacher and more. It was a way to document my daily life. I started out writing it for family, but soon became something I was writing for the many followers who had hopped on board my blogging train. The image above was taken around the time of which I am speaking.  In the prime of my blogging career.

I loved it.

After about 3 years, I was on a roll. My days were filled with taking photos, writing blog posts and ignoring my children.

What?

Yes, you read that right. One beautiful summer day, I was inside at my desk working on my latest blog post. I can’t remember exactly what that day was about – but it was important and I had to get it done. It may have been the post when I showed everyone my husband’s new beet truck. Maybe it was a recipe or even the post where I boasted of the journals I am writing in to present to my children when they are 16.

What an awesome mother I was.

So, I’m sitting there and my 5 1/2 year old daughter comes walking in from outside with a skip in her step and walks over to my desk. Do I look up from my screen? Do I acknowledge that she’s standing there? Um, of course not. I mean, how rude of her to just stand there staring at me. Couldn’t she tell I was working hard at something of utter importance – people were waiting for this daily blog post. Finally, annoyed that she’s just watching me work, I say in a somewhat frustrated tone, “What Belle?” without even glancing away from the screen and my fingers continuing to pen such amazing content.

“I thought you said you were going to come outside with me and Scout.”

“I did. After I was done with my blog post. I told you to give me a couple seconds.” You know how you assume your children don’t exactly understand the concept of time, so you throw out that phrase any time you’re not ready to do something.

“That was a long time ago, Mommy.”

Now I’m irritated.

“Izabella. Mommy is working and I will be done soon. When I am, THEN I will come out with you guys. Go play until I get there.” Once again, not even bothering to look her in the face as I said it. And, yet, another phrase I use so often – “Go play until I get there.”

As she walked away, I looked over the top of my computer with an attitude, even though she couldn’t see it and I saw the most attention grabbing scene.

My beautiful, tender-hearted 5 year old daughter was walking away with her head down and shoulders dropped. This time there was no skip in her step – in fact, she was slow and heavy.

My heart sank.

Almost immediately, a question came up inside me and in a small way, it rocked the world of this stay-at-home mom of a 5 year old and a 1 ½ year old. Maybe it won’t seem so severe to others, but it was a wake up call for me.

The questions I heard was loud and clear and it was this:

“Are you blogging about your life, or has blogging become your life?”

Wow.

I knew right away, it was the latter, and for that I was ashamed.

I remember sitting there for a few minutes just staring out the window at my kids playing in the backyard. They had been waiting out there for a long time. For me. My daughter was right – I told her a couple minutes, but before I knew it, it had turned to 30 minutes, then 60 minutes, then 90 minutes.

I’d been missing out on summer and valuable time with my kids. I love summer. The long days, the warm weather, being outside, relaxing…and I was missing all of it.

I never blogged about that part of my amazing motherhood. I mean, who would want to read about a mother who spent her days writing about her kids, but never spent time with them? Who would want to follow and admire a mother whose eyes graced her computer screen more than the faces of her children or spouse?

I knew many other “mommy bloggers” and they seemed to handle the balance of family and blogging just fine.

At least, it sure sounded like it when I read their blogs.

I realized that I wasn’t someone who balanced things very well. As I sat there I was remembering when I started the blog so I could keep family and friends up to date on our life and kids! I loved taking photos and have for as long as I can remember, especially of my family, so what a wonderful way to show everyone our life through my lens. When did that change? Was it when I had a few hundred people following my blog and people constantly commenting on my posts? Did I feel obligated to keep the content coming? I mean, what about that beet truck that was now sitting on the side of my house motionless? What about the cookie recipe I know everybody wants? What about those journals? I had fan club and I couldn’t let them down.

I put the finishing touches on my latest blog post, closed my laptop and went outside. I’d like to say I went out and played my heart out with my kids – but I didn’t it. I remember sitting there trying to figure out what I was going to do. I knew what I had to do, but what was I going to do? I remember feeling guilt as I looked back on the previous months and I didn’t really have any outstanding memories of how I spent them with my kids. That was wrong. Did I get so caught up in this small, superficial realm of blogging stardom that my family no longer was priority? So much to think about.

How could I stop blogging everyday? What will all those people do without me in their inbox everyday? Will they be able to feel satisfied with their life if they didn’t get to read about the goings on in my life, try my recipes or find out the latest piece of machinery my husband had purchased? I’ve worked hard on this. I’ve made friends (with whom I am still in contact today) and know so much about everybody else’s life too! What a dilemma.

I had to stop. Yes, that’s what I had to do. I already told you I’m not good at balancing stuff like that, so I knew I couldn’t continue blogging, but just cut back. Nope. That would never happen. I had to cut it off. Sever it. Fling it far from me.

How depressing.

After a couple days of thinking about it and staring at a piece of paper I hung on my wall where I wrote that internal question – I wrote my last personal blog post.

I was free. Literally, when I hit the publish button, I suddenly felt free. This wouldn’t pull on me anymore on a day to day basis. I wouldn’t have to always think about what I was going to blog about next. I was free.

I didn’t blog again for over a year and it was wonderful. I started being a mom and wife again. The rest of the summer I spend outside with my kids – enjoying (almost) every minute. We took long walks that could take 2 hours if my kids wanted to stop and play in the creek. Usually I only allowed 30 minutes total, because I was always in a hurry to get back and work on my blog. Not anymore. We’d set up the slip-n-slide, wading pool and spend hot afternoons inside cuddled on the couch watching a movie.

I finally starting doing something more with my to-do list other than write things on it. I worked in my garden, did tons of crafts with the kids, made some improvements around the house and even lost a few pounds from actually moving again. I also had time to get back to living life again.

I no longer took photos because it would look good in a blog post and I didn’t analyze every conversation wondering how I could turn it into something for everyone to read about. I didn’t plan birthday parties around how I could blog about it and make it look like I was a Pinterest mom (although, to my knowledge, Pinterest wasn’t around yet).

I had finally realized what was important and who was important and it was a wonderful feeling!

A little over a year after I made that decision, I started a business blog so I could continue teaching about wellness and health. I was still passionate about sharing what I knew about health and although I prefer teaching classes or writing cookbooks – this was still a good way to reach people. I started that blog four years ago and I’ll be honest with you – I never really had my heart in it. I enjoyed sharing information, but it seemed so…business-y.

No that’s not a word. Well, it is now.

It even got to the point where I was only doing posts once a week, then once every two weeks, then maybe once a month. My heart wasn’t in blogging anymore. I wasn’t in blogging anymore.

That was it. Something I loved about my personal blog was the ability to have “me” in it. My personality. My photographs. My sense of humor. My beliefs.

Business blogging was dull and lifeless. Informational? Yes. Inspirational? No.

That brings me to today. The here and now. I’m still not someone who wants to blog everyday anymore – I learned such a life lesson from all of that and I’d rather spend my time doing something productive: making my house a home, stating businesses, online courses, periscoping, writing books, playing with my kids – who are now 10 ½ and almost 7! I want to sit out on my deck with my husband at night and watch shooting stars – not sit at my computer writing about myself.

Yet, I still want to blog on a consistent basis to stay connected to those who have followed me through my years of Wellness Coaching – BUT I now want to add “me” back into it. After all, I want to relate to people. Real people. Moms, wives, sisters, aunts, business owners, homeschoolers, friends, entrepreneurs…real people. And that’s just what I will do.

I have merged all of my Living Strong Wellness and Health Made Easy accounts to one account – Kari Newsom – because that’s who I am. It’s all a part of me. My teaching how you can feed your family healthy foods can be demonstrated by how I do it for mine. I can better teach you the joys and hassles of a healthy lifestyle, by being honest about mine (like, do I ever go through a fast-food line because I’m too lazy to cook dinner???? Ummmm, yes – hello!!!) All the new info is below!

So along with all my info on health, nutrition, food – you’ll now start getting a little dose of me too! I hope you’ll like getting to know me and my family better. I know I’m looking forward to getting to know all of you! I won’t be posting everyday – maybe once a week, twice if my brain is so full I just have to write more, but once a week for sure. I also know that everybody is busy and even now, our inboxes have become an overwhelming place of junk mail and email overload from businesses and professionals. I plan on skipping that trend!

Thanks for hanging in with me while I shared my heart with you. Until next time, laugh often, love deeply and live on purpose…everyday!

Kari

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