The Gilded Margin

Start Over Sunday| Gilded Margin

There is a particular kind of guilt that comes with having a list of things you genuinely want to do and not doing them.

I know this because I have been staring at mine.

Content I wanted to make. Things I wanted to write. Books I wanted to talk about. Projects I wanted to start. Trips I wanted to plan. Ideas that sounded fantastic when I wrote them down and considerably less fantastic when real life showed up.

For a while, I kept thinking, I need to catch up.

That phrase sounds harmless, but I don’t think it is.

Catch up with what?

Some imaginary version of myself who has perfectly managed work, family, responsibilities, money, animals, creative projects, and somehow still remembered to drink enough water?

She doesn’t exist.

And frankly, I don’t think I want her job.

Life doesn’t care about the content calendar

There are weeks when everything seems to cooperate.

Then there are weeks when work is busy, somebody needs something, the house needs attention, the animals need attention, and your brain has apparently decided that remembering something you need three weeks from now is more important than the thing sitting directly in front of you.

That’s life.

It isn’t particularly Instagrammable, but it is real.

And somewhere along the way, I started treating creating content like another obligation instead of something I actually enjoy.

That’s not what I want Gilded Margin to be.

So I’m not catching up.

I’m starting again.

There is a difference.

Starting again doesn’t require me to recreate everything I missed.

It just means I pick up the conversation where I am now.

And honestly, I have plenty to talk about.

Books I’m reading. Things I’m learning. Faith and the questions that come with it. Victim advocacy and human behavior. Animals being ridiculous. Travel. Movies. Coffee. Random rabbit holes that somehow turn into three hours of research.

Basically, the things that live in the margins of my life.

Which is, conveniently, what Gilded Margin was supposed to be all along.

A little less perfection. A little more life.

I’m not interested in pretending I have everything figured out.

Some of the things I’ll write about, I know a lot about.

Some things I’m still learning.

Some things I have strong opinions about.

And some things I’m going to have to sit with for a while.

I think there’s room for all of that.

So if you’ve noticed that things have been quieter around here, that’s the explanation.

Nothing dramatic happened.

I got busy living.

And now I’m ready to start sharing some of it again.

Not perfectly.

Not all at once.

Just honestly.

Welcome back to Gilded Margin.

I have a feeling the next chapter is going to be interesting.