Part of Newton’s First Law of Motion—which I’m paraphrasing—states that a body in motion will remain in motion, and a body at rest will remain at rest, until acted upon by another force. I’m planning to use that as my legal defense.

Not that my body has been at rest. But my blog has. My last post said that I was going to take a summer break and be off-line for a few weeks. That was on July 1.

Obviously, a few weeks turned into more than a few, and my summer break lasted well into autumn. There were a number of reasons for that. My original reason for taking a break was for some travel my husband and I had planned for the summer, including a trip to visit family and friends in Chicago and Minnesota, then another trip to Chicago for a long-overdue reunion with friends from college, and a bucket-list trip to central and eastern Europe.

Other, unplanned reasons included some computer glitches that, among other things, knocked out my email address for a while, and blocked all incoming and outgoing messages until I got the problem fixed. Also, there was a new medical issue that turned out to be relatively minor and quickly resolved. But it required time spent on medical tests and additional doctor appointments.

This may all sound like I feel guilty and am just making excuses for not getting back to my blog sooner. And I have to admit that I do, and I am. But there’s something else going on, too, and it has to do with that Law of Motion Newton came up with—the part about a body at rest remaining at rest. It explains—but doesn’t excuse—the fact that once you stop doing something that used to be automatic for you, it can be difficult to start up again. This can happen with a writing routine, an exercise routine, or anything that has been a normal routine for you, and then suddenly isn’t—for whatever reason. You then have to work harder to get back in the habit than you did when it was an automatic part of your life.

I’m planning on doing that work, because writing has always been important to me, because it’s something I enjoy, and because I still have people who say from time to time that my words have had a positive impact on their lives, or that they learned something they didn’t know before. Because of different obligations and priorities, I don’t plan to publish weekly, as I did for 16 years of writing my newspaper column, or my first years as a blogger. But I do plan to get back into my writing routine, and to stay in motion.

I think Newton would approve.

October 13, 2025
©Betty Liedtke, 2025

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