An Update

I meant to begin a regular habit of posting here with that last update. Work suddenly took off, though, at a wild pace. And the complexity of cases I work with suddenly multiplied at the same time. Just when I was feeling like I'd gotten used to the last increase of difficulty. Sometimes it feels like I'm playing Tetris or something. You know, one of those games that endlessly increase their challenge as you gain in skill.

But, here we are. I'm proud of me, actually. Not only did complexity ramp up rather suddenly, but I think my new business is finally on its feet. I've been told that these first two years are some of the toughest - lots of making due with less (or making due without) so that you keep your business afloat. That has certainly seems to have been true for us. After two years of steady staff fluctuation, I think I finally have a stable team of really good people and now we're starting to find some balance.

I even let myself have a real holiday. I didn't do anything work related for a whole week and it was marvelous. That may have actually been my first real holiday in a few years. Oh, I've done some personal retreats for a weekend. And technically those still provide that form of fully disconnecting from work responsibilities. But retreats have that spiritual recovery side of things to pay attention to. They're for reflection. Sometimes for redirection. This was just a rest. It was just for fun, and allowed me to live without heavy responsibilities alongside some emotionally supportive people for a little while.

I'm still considering my creativity. My creative expression of self. I think I mentioned several months ago that I've started exercising my "voice" in my video creation for my YouTube channel and in my little Minecraft community. That's the only place my playfulness feels consistently welcome. Writing fiction is still so very very difficult. Part of me is still wondering if I've actually changed too much to return to how I used to express myself. Maybe 41-year-old me is too different from 17-year-old me. Maybe I won't ever finish the trilogy that younger me started. Another part of me wants to stubbornly relearn how to write anyhow. It refuses to accept that I may have genuinely "lost my voice" during those years of burnout. That part of me is desperate to express me again, desperate to help me be playful. Desperate to help me feel valid. I don't know what the answer is here. If I'm going to get back to writing my novel, then it'll be a monumental exercise in self-discipline. And (truthfully) self-discipline is not one of my strongest traits.

Anyhow. Regardless of all those reasons (excuses) for not keeping up my writing habit, it's time to try again. Practice is trying and trying and trying and continuing to try. I will continue to try.