Where Have I Been?!?

All right.

The cold, hard, here it is: it's been over a month since my last post, and I said I was going to try to post once a week. The vague "end of April" giveaway deadline I tossed out is long gone. If you don't follow me on Substack, you've seen nothing of me since April the 6th. Where on Earth have I been?! And why haven't I been posting?!

Well, first of all, it is graduation time. And if you didn't know, yours truly is graduating from high school on May 22nd!! I've been a mess trying to throw together everything for graduation, from classes and tests to a graduation party to a trifold board. So, I've been busy with graduation.

Second, my birthday was a week ago!! I'm seventeen now - at least that's what they tell me. That's not really an excuse, but it's added to my emotional load and planning things surrounding that was just another thing on the to-do list.

Third, my health. This is the really big reason I basically dropped off the face of my blog for a month and ten days. I struggle with chronic health problems like acid reflux as well as unexplained debilitating fatigue. A couple of weeks ago, I had a really bad flareup. I've been recovering since then, both physically and trying to catch up on everything I got behind on while I was sick. It's not that I don't have time to do things like write blog posts and articles; most of the problem is that once I get off work or get home from school, I just feel braindead from the amount of energy it takes to do regular things all day. I've been trying to recover and get my health back under control, and my blog presence gets a lot less priority as I struggle with trying to get a diagnosis and cope with the issues until I have an explanation.

Lastly, because of my health issues, I had to quit my retail job. Just because of the type of job it was, they weren't really able to accommodate all of the things that bothered me (like looking back and forth between items and the screen making me dizzy or the lighting giving me headaches). My last day was yesterday, and although I'm very sad to go and I feel sort of out of place now, I'm excited to see how this helps me and changes what my future will look like.

So, why am I saying all this? Am I just making excuses for not being chronically online or not being "good enough" or something? Partially, yes, I'm apologizing because I want to be able to write more posts. But mostly, I wanted people I have real connections with to know why I was gone and that, hopefully, I'm back now!

I've got several post ideas lined up. I'm going to ramp up the The Otherfolk and Beyond the Wall giveaway and set a real, solid release date for the winner. I'm hoping to post photos of things I've made soon, along with maybe how I made them. I might do book reviews on a couple of my favorite books or something like that. I'm always looking to hear from you all: what ideas do you have? What would you like me to write on more often? You can use any of the forms on my website to ask me to write about anything or just say hi. Seriously, I'm so inspired by people reaching out to me and asking me anything or telling me about themselves - it's so cool to hear from y'all! All that to say, I'm really going to try to keep this blog up now that I don't have a job. I'm hoping that it'll help me expand my reach somehow! If you know someone who might enjoy this, I'd really appreciate it if you would send them the link - you guys are my best way to get the word out!

In the meantime, I'm off to write a real blog post... 😉