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Daily Blogging

February 22, 2026 — Pat Bertram

For years, I blogged every day mostly as a discipline to give form to my days and because I knew that if I ever stopped, I might just let the practice slide away. And the practice did. Slide away, I mean. In January 2023, I still posted every day, and I continued until the middle of February. After that, I posted only sporadically, maybe 25 posts the rest of that year, 7 the following year, and 14 last year. Not very impressive, but then, it wasn’t supposed to be. I simply had nothing to say that I wanted to make public. I’d gradually become sensitive about putting my thoughts out there for anyone to read, so unless I had something innocuous to post, such as pictures of my garden, I kept my thoughts to myself.

Which makes me wonder why all of a sudden this year I’ve found myself blogging again. It wasn’t a conscious decision. I just posted on the first of January, then the second, then . . .

Now here I am, day 53 of daily blogging, though I have no idea why. Can’t even begin to guess. Not that the reason matters. What matters, I suppose, is that I am sitting at my computer. Digging words out of my sluggish brain. Trying to make sense of the world at large.

I originally wrote, “the world around me” and only substituted “the world at large” when I realized that world around me makes sense. I look out the window, and I see that the sky is blue, the grass a dry winter green, the streets empty. I hear clucking from chickens a couple of houses away, tapping now and again from the roofers halfway down the block, and a train in the distance. But it’s mostly quiet. Peaceful. When I close my computer, the only tensions I feel are from the book I’m reading, and most of those come because I’m not engaged in the story at all. (I thought I should get away from the Wheel of Time for a while, but going from the study of a multi-layered epic to reading a simple one-note novel, makes that novel feel even flatter than it really is.)

But this isn’t a post about reading. It’s about writing, finding words in my own head rather than in someone else’s, even if the words I find don’t mean a whole lot. It’s about being able to see something to appreciate in my small life and being able to express my feelings. It’s about being centered on what truly matters to me right now rather than worrying so much about things happening elsewhere that I have no control over.

What I do have control over are my words, and I that, I imagine, more than anything, is what makes this current practice of blogging every day important to me. Though to tell the truth, I’m still not sure I want to make my thoughts public. Luckily for me, my tulips are making themselves known, telling me that gardening season is coming, and soon we can both contemplate something more interesting — watching my garden grow.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

Posted in blogging, books, internet, life. Tags: blogging every day, control over words, daily blogging, finding something to appreciate, personal. 5 Comments »

Update

January 8, 2025 — Pat Bertram

After an early heavy snow, followed by higher than average temperatures, we’re now in a deep freeze. Later in the week, the temperatures will get above freezing, although only fleetingly.

And then all too soon, it will be time to work out in my yard again.

I enjoy these months of respite from the struggle against weeds and sun-dried grass, but I miss the daily gifts — the flowers that come up despite this harsh climate, the volunteer plants that so tenaciously take a stand, the perennials that stretch their territory. I do get a flower fix with paint-by-number kits. It’s not the same as real gardening by any means, but it’s a real boon to someone without an artistic bone in her body.

Oddly, what I don’t miss is writing — about gardening or anything else, for that matter. For almost three decades, writing (and blogging) was my life. It kept me going during the long years of Jeff’s ill health and in the dark times after he died. It gave me a reason to get up in the morning, gave me a focus that I might not otherwise have had. In fact, because of this blog, I went on excursions and attended events I might have passed on, but I figured anything I did gave me a topic to write about.

So did my desire to stay at home squelch my desire to blog? Or did my lack of desire to blog squelch any desire for venturing out? Silly questions. Silly because the answers don’t matter. I’ve become a homebody, and that’s it. My being a homebody is not surprising since I’ve always had reclusive tendencies, but what is surprising is that I have a home. And a garden! It still astonishes me that this place is mine. In my restless years of grief and its aftermath, I spent a lot of mental energy trying to figure out what my unshared future would be like, and never once did I come close to imagining this reality.

I remember back then occasionally thinking that my future should be wonderful, because if the pain of grief was something I never knew existed, then there had to be some joy to come I also never knew existed.

And now here it is. And now here I am.

Of course, that raises a conundrum that I try not to consider: the only reason I’m living this particular good life is that Jeff is not here. Still, the last thing Jeff ever said to me was that everything would work out for me, so I know he’d be pleased for me. And yet, there’s that niggle in the back of my head that I try not to think about.

But those are thoughts for another time.

Today I’ll think good thoughts and be grateful for all I’ve been given.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.