Yesterday marked four years since I posted my first blog post here. I am not sure that I ever imagined I would write for four years. Originally it was more of a short term project that I wasn’t really sure how long it would last. At that time I had just had our third child and was still navigating a lot of the waters of the overseas life in only my 5th experience overseas. Now Joe has been playing for 11 years and in many ways we feel like the “old folks” of the basketball world.

These past few years have brought about many changes in me in terms of how I relate to digital media and the basketball world in general. And because of many of these changes, this blog is also going to go through a bit of a facelift as well.  Some of the reasons for the changes are:

1. I have less and less of a desire to be “digital”.  The more I have searched my heart, my priorities and what I want to define me, I realize that sitting at a computer doesn’t fit as well into what I want to define my life.  I think there are people who are called to it, but where I am right now, I don’t feel like I am.  I don’t have a desire to blog as much anymore and would much rather be spending time with my family and friends in person.
2. I wanted to write to encourage others who were in a similar situation as me.  And I hope I have done that over the past four years.  But lately I have felt like I am searching for things to blog on in terms of the basketball life.  And I don’t want to have to search and think too much about myself or our “unique” situation.  Too much introspection and gazing at my own life is not healthy.  So I feel like I have come to the end of most of my basketball experiences that I want to share for now.
3. This upcoming season of life is going to be a busy one.  We are about to adjust back to the U.S. once again and I will be busy with activities for the kids and being a single mom of four children for a time.  Plus once Joe is home for the summer, we are always busy with visiting family and friends and just enjoying our time in the U.S.  And I don’t picture myself being tied to the computer very often, or even wanting to be.
4. I have become more and more uncomfortable with the culture of “blogging” where anyone and everyone can set themselves up as an expert.  I know I have done it often, so I am in no way just pointing the finger at others here, but the overall nature of blogging often seems to be one of believing you have a very valuable opinion and that as many people as possible should listen to it.  I do think that many people have valuable things to say, but we all seem to want to be teachers instead of learners in this day of age.  I want to spend more time being a learner.

When I first started thinking about this a few months ago, I thought I would just stop blogging on here.  I shared that with Joe and he immediately began trying to convince me otherwise.  He did encourage me though to maybe take a look at blogging a bit different, so as I have thought about it over the last couple of months (while I had mostly scheduled posts to go up) I came up with a few changes that I think will keep me blogging in a more enjoyable way:

1. My blogging may be sporadic because I am not going to pressure myself to have a post up any certain number of times a week.  So I may be more random at times.
2. My blogging about the basketball lifestyle will be minimal.  The Basket Wives section will continue to stay up as a reference that I pray will bless many women, but the topics probably won’t focus on this lifestyle as much anymore.  I have enjoyed the Meet the Basket Wives series, but even that will only come when I meet a woman in person I would like to feature on the blog.
3. There will more recommendations and quotes.  I have been doing a lot more reading since not spending as much time on the computer.  So much of it has encourage amy soul that I would like to share and recommend more, as I used Twitter for.  Much of my blogging will also probably come through things these books cause me to think through.
4. The blog in general will act more as a daily journal in terms of writing out what I learn and struggle through in order to experience a greater depth of learning, and hopefully encourage others.  Only when those lessons involve the family will the family be brought in.  More of the personal posts (top ten events of the previous year, birthday  and anniversary posts, etc.) will be post don our family blog from now on.
5. There will be less effort on the visual appeal of the blog.  Not that the point of my blog was to ever have the best looking blog, but I am going to forgo even the few extra minutes to post pictures and fancy signatures.

So that is the plan for now.  Hopefully this stream of consciousness has made some sort of sense.  As always, thank you so much for being the fabulous readers that you are and for helping me along in my journey.