Let's Face It, This Blog Has Been on Hiatus

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I am a lazy blogger. There are times when I post regularly (usually when I attend courses and workshops) and there are times when I don't post anything for a month or two. I stopped apologising for my silences long ago. Blogging takes time and I don't always have time. Still, this year I feel I owe you all an explanation, if not an apology.

I started the year well. I wrote a couple of posts which I believe were quite good. Then, since March, nothing. Silence.

Has this blog been on hiatus? If so, why?

I never planned to take a break from blogging, but, as you'll see, things happened. One of the "things" that happened was my other blog. I believe people with multiple blogs often have this problem, but in my case it was drastic.

Summer Blues is my poetry blog. I started it in August 2011, when I finally plucked up the courage to start sharing my hobby with the world. Not much was happening there until April 2013, when I participated in my first NaPoWriMo poetic challenge. NaPoWriMo is held every April and you post a poem a day. Despite its name, it is international. I started the challenge tentatively, but like a good nerd, I posted a poem (sometimes even two) every day. I met great people who encouraged me to persevere.

I have to say that in 2013 the challenge didn't really do any harm to my teaching blog, except that  it kept me from posting here for a month. We could argue that I took the challenge more seriously in 2014 (I once again managed to post every day), but this time other things happened as well.

OK, the culprit is my kidney. For the past four months I have been trying to get rid of kidney stones. This hasn't happened to me for the first time, but this time it has been much, much worse than usual. As anyone who has had them will tell you, kidney stones are nasty. Believe me, the last thing on your mind when you have kidney colics is blogging.

If you have just been to my other blog and if you are observant, you will notice that I managed to post there every day during November, the month I was supposedly incapacitated by kidney stones. In fact, I succeeded in completing another poetry challenge.

When you are in pain, poetry helps. You can vent and complain. I don't normally complain in my TEFL blog, and I rarely vent. Besides, to write about TEFL, I need the classroom. I need to be teaching in order to get new blogging ideas. This autumn I was on sick leave for six weeks.

However, I am back now and I am eager to start blogging. Natasa's Blog will be seven years old in January and in November it was 25 years since I had started teaching. These are important milestones and I have so much I want to share with you in 2015.