I am back.

Or rather, I never left.

I've always been here, but for a while there life took me so swiftly down the road, both in good ways and hard ways, that it was difficult for me to stop and reflect, and blogging fell way down the priority list.

The blog became somewhat of a conundrum. I missed it terribly; but the more I missed it, the more I worried about starting again. Fearing what I want has always been a good way for me to prolong a decision to the point of agony (and that's why I'm such fun at parties).

So. I'm sliding back into blogging with this post. Just like that, no ta-DAH! Because I don't really have much ta-DAH! in me even on the best days. But leaving this blog for so long has meant ignoring some promises that I made to people in my life, and to myself, and it's time for me to own up on the scared part so I can just maybe have the what-I-want part.

Still, to mark the occasion, I've done a few things. I've made the blog a little cleaner looking, less cluttered, and in colors I like. I designed a new header, and it's a symbolic change. I've always mentally thought of the title of this blog "On the Doorstep" as meaning the front door. The entrance. The threshold.

But my priorities in life have shifted to being about the other doorstep-- the one at the back of the house, where we really live, where the people we really love come and go. So the photo is of my backyard patio and screen porch doorstep. A deliberately not-perfect photo-- there are cans of bug spray in the window and a stack of plastic plant pots that need to be put away. Because perfect is the enemy of good, and I'd really like to concentrate more on the good than the perfect here. Here the string lights work their twinkly magic over the table that Tom build for our family, and I over-indulge my taste for potted plants and random bits of old stuff.

I will have a number of wobbly posts until I have found my stride again. I haven't quite decided whether I will try to catch reader up in what I've been up to since my last post, or whether I'll just go on from here, or whether I'll leap around like a badly written TV series. I will undoubtedly have more amateurish photos, non-regular posting schedules, and ideas that don't quite hang together. But I hope it makes for good reading, just the same. It's good to be back.