As you can tell, it has been a while since I have added to this blog. I would love to pontificate about the daily challenges of being a wife, mother, employee, volunteer, and patient to justify why I have essentially stopped doing what I love. Alas, it would all be a lie. People make time for what is important to them. That means either I have made a decision that writing is no longer important to me or I disappeared in the Blip and just came back? (Watching way too much Marvel content) Or, maybe, it’s neither. Maybe I stopped writing because after pouring three years of my soul into a novel, it was rejected. Like a lot. By like a lot of people. Soul Crushing. So, I started spinning as my mind often does and decided that maybe I’m not any good at this. My cheerleaders did their song and dance of reminding me of all the pieces I have published and have won awards for, etc. That’s their job. They love me. If I just wrote for the people who love me, I’d be all good. Even now, I’m not sure where this is going. I’m sitting at the kitchen table with my college student writing while she does her homework because she wanted company. I envy the youth at her disposal. The time she has laid out in front of her to explore, learn, discover, and come to a decision on what her contribution to the world will be reminds me how close to the grave I actually am. Then she asks me a question about what she is learning and the burning envy flame dimms. I forget how little I actually knew in my youth. Next to me is the marked up manuscript that gasps for air and searches for new life like a diver running out air. I don’t know if I have it in me to rewrite this yet again. To be honest, I don’t even think that these characters want me to bother them. They’ve spent nearly 11 months on a dusty shelf in a copy store brown box marinating in their creator’s failure to give them a proper home on a shelf or on someone’s TBR list. Perhaps I should have stuck with journalism. No real creative struggles there. Ask questions, write down answers, and make it fit column size. Easy. This giving birth to characters and worlds is exhausting. Ok, it’s also exciting. I guess I’m not used to things being this hard for me.