Yes, I know, another Swiftie reference. They are everywhere and at this point you either love it or hate it. I could probably write several blog posts about TS and her impact on the world; but really I just wanted to reference her songwriting magic because this song hits home every time I hear it. I'll circle back to this in a minute but first things first...
I'm back!
It's been 8 years since my last post. Yeesh, sorry y'all. At first, I figured it didn't really matter. But as the years went by, I still received messages from people who read my past entries and still got likes on the diary's Facebook page. That blew me away. I felt the overwhelming urge to continue this diary in the hopes that those who find it may find some comfort in it.
So this blog post is going to mostly be a life update. Stick with me though because in the amount of time I've been away, I've got some good content to share with you over time. Anxiety, motherhood, travel, diet, exercise...dot, dot, dadgum dot. I've got a lot to talk about! Are you ready for it?
Let's clear some things up. Are we still traveling? No. My husband does still take jobs all over the country, but the girls and I do not go alongside him anymore. Long story short, my little baby girls are not so little anymore. They are school age (one in middle school!) and traveling with them just didn't work anymore. This is hard. Maybe the hardest part of my life really. There are so many days I wish for a normal life. One where my husband comes home from work each night instead of Facetime calls from hundreds if not thousands of miles away. As it is, that traveling welder lifestyle is still what supports our family. But burnout is real (for my husband and for our family as a whole). So right now, he and I are both working to change that, slowly but surely. Truthfully, I could write a book about the struggles we have faced, but couldn't we all?
When I started this blog in 2013 (wow, time does fly) we had literally packed up everything we owned, threw it all in a storage building, and drove across the country to New Mexico to follow my husband on the road. It was easy back then (though truly it didn't feel easy at all) because babies are portable. No school drop-offs, no nightly sports events, no painstaking math homework. Easy.
It's not so easy now. 10ish years later, life is beautifully chaotic and vastly different than it was back in our early travel days. This blog will continue to be called The Diary of a Traveling Welder's Wife though because I am and always will be her.
The goal of this blog in all those years though has not changed. I want to inspire you. I want to motivate you. I want to share my blunders and blessings with you because the first thing God said wasn't good was for us to be alone. We weren't made that way. So as much as I have tried and failed at many things, I want this to be the one I keep trying at. So this is me trying.
I won't drag this one out. I just wanted to update you guys. I do want to use this blog as a way to share the things that are pushing me through life on hard days or making my life a little easier. This is why I mentioned those lyrics earlier on. That song has been my anthem for 2024. I highly recommend Taylor Swift's album folklore if you are looking for some musical inspiration. This album is one for those of you who aren't Swifties or haven't listened to her music in a while. The songs are beautifully written and are not the typical pop bops we have all grown accustomed to with her.
For now, I'll go. But I'm so happy to be back and hope that as I share my diary with you, you'll find hope and joy in it.
Lots of love, Barbie
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