at the end, a possible new beginning

There haven’t been too many blog posts from me this year—only three, if the Scrivener project in which I keep all these entries is to be believed. I was only somewhat more active in this space the year prior.

Many things kept me from blogging more, including health, stress, grief, anxiety, and a bunch of other things I could probably name if I wanted to think about it more. The main factor, of course, was yours truly. I don’t like that I became so inactive on my blog, even as I was writing a good bit in other spaces. And I’d like to change that.

I don’t want to start off by making promises I either can’t or won’t keep. But I’ve got some ideas in mind for coming posts. Part of the struggle in getting warmed up here again is trying to figure out what to write about, as though there would be a dearth of topics. But just as I hope to get back into the habit of blogging on a semi-regular basis, those topics should be easier to come by as well. The more you write, the more you can write. That’s the idea, anyway.

Some of the topics I’d like to tackle include what’s been going on with my bullet journal. I’m still keeping one of these, after starting my daily bullet journal practice back in October 2014. My bullet journal underwent some significant changes during 2022; I experimented with new formats, giving discbound pages a shot and then moving into a digital bullet journal, and there have been some new practices I’ve adopted along the way, too.

One of those practices is a “slot system” that a friend introduced me to over the summer. And, y’all, that has changed everything for me. It’s such a simple approach to put into practice, but it has been effective from the start at helping me to better manage my deadlines and multiple professional projects along with my personal responsibilities.

I’d like to dip into the low-FODMAP journey I’ve been on since August 2021, in an attempt to better manage the IBS that had grown more painful and problematic in the last few years. I’m still figuring out what I can and cannot safely eat, and everything’s an experiment in that realm—as in much of life, too. There’s been a huge learning curve on this, and I feel like the playing field keeps shifting, but things are better than they were, and that’s not nothing.

With the new paranormal cozy mystery series I’ve been writing, I’ve fallen into a one-book-per-year writing and publishing rhythm that seems to suit me well, for where I am these days. That was part happy accident and also partly by design, and I’d like to pull back the curtain a little on that, because while there are plenty of aspects of writing that can feel almost mystical, it is still real work—you know, that adage about inspiration and perspiration—and trying to find a process that accommodates my various health concerns has been a challenge.

So that’s some of what I’d like to address in the coming blog posts. I’ve even been kicking around this idea of starting a dedicated blog for productivity tips and tricks—and downfalls, and commiseration—around trying to get creative work done while managing chronic illness, chronic pain, and ASD. Maybe I’ll even get one or more of these entries written and posted before the current year is out. At the least, the intention is present to come back into this space, and posting these words—as opposed to just saying them to myself every once in a while—is an important first step.