A lot of shit has happened over the past 30 days. I’ve been busy with work, completed ACLS (Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support) training finally, was invited to be a bridesmaid to my friend’s destination wedding next year (eep!), and I got Covid a second time, which basically depleted the rest of the PTO that was left over after getting my kidney stone removed in June. Despite all the busyness, I still had quite a bit of time off, which allowed me to accomplish a lot of stuff (other than when I was suffering from a nearly 103 degree fever), and I kept meaning to come back here and write a few posts, maybe even restart my weekly ritual of “on rotation” playlists.

But I just … didn’t?

I can’t really explain why, except that I had a lot of other things on my mind. Like laundry, talking to my boyfriend who was in South Korea for work for almost the entirety of July, breaking down cardboard boxes for recycling (trust me, it’s An Event because we have so. many.), painting, writing on my WIP. My internet presence wasn’t even on the backburner.

Now, I was an early adopter of a lot of social media platforms, even the ones that were aimed at Gen Z, and I’ll likely try out any new ones that pop up, just for funsies. Back in the aughts and early 2010s, I had a humble following on Tumblr and Twitter, but that has since dropped off, something I blame myself for since I just kind of dropped off after a certain point, but now? How can I fix it? Or would/should I? I honestly don’t know.

I want to be able to reach people for my writing, but I’m not sure I want the pressure of all this content creation to remain relevant. That time could be spent actually writing, and I don’t have the clout or readily available money that, say, Neil Gaiman or George RR Martin or fucking JK Rowling has to maintain it. Other than JKR, I mean that in the best way (she can go straight to TERF hell); I love that level of success for them. But what am I to do? I have a full-time job at the hospital where I work 12-hour shifts, then have other life things that I have to do, like hang with friends and family, wash/dry laundry, exercise, and just attempt to generally enjoy living (although that’s becoming increasingly difficult to do because, well, the world is a shithole), and then I have to fit writing my WIP into all of that. Somehow.

It’s all very discouraging. I don’t want to be chronically online, but I don’t want to miss out on reaching somebody who might like what I write. So like … what do I do here? This is obviously a rhetorical question, but the defeated tone is definitely there. I’ll likely be restructuring my website to be less focused on regular blogging, but I’m not even sure when I’ll be doing that. New posts might be scarce for the time being, at least until I can get some content ready to go … I just want this to be fun for me again, instead of a chore for me to come and scribble down random thoughts. I miss doing my challenges – I’m still planning on finishing the LOTR one because I legitimately like those movies and I’m introducing them to my boyfriend soon, as he’s somehow never seen them – and compiling YouTube videos I think other people would like.

This truly wasn’t meant to be a complaining post or anything. It’s more just an air-out of feelings and possibly a way for me to work through whatever all this is so I can come up with a solution. For now, I’ll just let it sit and hopefully I’ll resolve this in a way that makes me feel less anxious and shitty.

Sigh.