Why Long-Distance Relationships (Sometimes) Rock

(This picture has nothing to do with this post, but it looks kind of pretty right? Taken in Marseille, France.)

Welp. Sometimes life has a way of getting ahead of you. I had glorious plans for my blog this summer--I was going to get back to posting (nearly) every day, commenting on all my fave blogs (I promise I'm reading, just silently) and staying in the game. 

But I kind of forgot that I sort of have stuff going on. You know, life. I promised a June Recap on Wednesday (umm, like five days ago). But H came to visit and we had five glorious days of pretending to be tourists, eating yummy food and having feel-talks. 

Having H come visit is and was so wonderful. He's my best friend and the one who knows the most about me in the whole world. So obviously, having him 800 miles away from me two months out of the year and 450 miles away for another 9 months of the year sucks. But long distance has been really good for us in a lot of ways.

We form separate lives. In North Carolina, H and I have a lot of mutual friends, which is great. But sometimes, I just want to go shopping and he just wants to watch movies and drive around with the boys (or whatever they do). 

We've learned to communicate more effectively. We both work a lot and because of the service around where I live, our phone calls are infrequent and often cut off in the middle. Hearing his voice is so much more special to me now that I don't get to hear it all the time. 

We've learned to trust each other, so much. The first time we lived apart, I struggled with jealousy about a certain female friend of his (who, by the way, was totally on the prowl). Since then, we (meaning I) have learned to trust him and ourselves and our relationship. 

Lastly, receiving handwritten cards and letters = the best. I think that's self-explanatory. There's something so familiar and homey about getting them and recognizing his weird handwriting and the way he never dots his 'i's.

Also, I have more time to catch up on Netflix without date nights. Kidding. 

Anyways. Rambling over. 

This has been a sappy post about H, thanks to my dad for buying him a plane ticket to visit me and to H for loving me. Love you poopface. Sorry for writing a blog post about you without asking you first. 

THE CASE AGAINST SCHEDULING BLOG POSTS

(photo by me, at Alcatraz)

There are a lot of great reasons to schedule your blog posts ahead of time. By writing posts ahead of time + scheduling them, I've been able to take time off to study for exams, vacation or just busy times. Any of you bloggers who have tried scheduling out posts ahead of time know that it can be an extremely convenient practice.

But over the last few months as I've been scheduling posts as much as two or three weeks in advance, I've felt more out of touch. Some days I don't even know what post is going live, only that it's a Monday/Wednesday/Friday so there must be one!

I find that I don't mention much what's really going on in my life...because it would be weeks-old news by the time it went live! For example, in the last couple posts, I haven't mentioned that I've been in the Sierra Nevadas on a hiking trip for the last two weeks. But that's because I wrote those posts a month ago!

Somehow, that just doesn't feel right. I want you to know what's going on right now, and in the same way, I want to be updated with you and my favorite bloggers. If I was just writing for a newspaper or something, scheduling would be fine. But because blogging is about community, I'm feeling the need to add that little life update back into my posts.

I'm not saying I'll never schedule posts again! I probably will when I'm on vacation or during exam weeks. But I'll try to write my posts less than a day or two ahead of time when possible so that I can stay in tune with what's currently going up on my blog. Make sense?

I will still keep an editorial calendar (which I recommend all bloggers do!) and will probably plan out posts ahead of time to some extent. But I want to make sure I focus on sharing more of the day-to-day details, and that just doesn't happen when I schedule posts. 

So I mentioned that I wanted to share more of what was going on in my life, like right now? Here's what I've been doing lately:

• I graduated, just over two weeks ago. Super exciting! Super crazy! Super busy!
• Two days later, I flew to San Francisco with my family.
• Over the last two weeks, we've been hiking through Sequoia, Yosemite, Big Sur, Kings Canyon and Lake Tahoe. We've been swimming and rafting and sleeping in yurts (no, really!) and ziplining and driving (so much. How is California so big?!) and so much more!
• I'm currently in Sacramento with friends, getting ready to fly home tomorrow.
• It's been crazy exciting but I'm ready to come home to NC.

Now that I've updated you, I want you to tell me. What have you been up to? Do you schedule posts? Tell me why you do or don't!