Wow, I haven’t written anything here since March.

Let’s catch up.

I’m now 224 days alcohol free. It’s been a great journey and one I have loved learning from. The power I have with a simple two letter sentence. No.

Do you want a drink? No. End of story. No explanation needed. Just no.

After the 30 Days clean in March, I realised I needed help with nutrition and am seeing a nutritionist until the end of the year. Nutrition has been harder to get right than saying no to alcohol and this is coming from a girl who enjoyed a great glass of scotch. But I’m failing and learning, succeeding and learning, and have a four month goal I’m aiming for as the year winds down. It’s about progress not perfection.

My Spiritually Fit 6 month deep dive comes to an end next week. What I have learned most from this journey is that sitting with myself and my thoughts has given me a mental fortitude and awareness about myself. I may not always meditate for lengths of time like I want or like but I know any meditation where I can pause and reflect for even a minute or two is good for me.

The muse that was scratching at the back of my brain in March…I didn’t welcome her. In fact, I ignored her. I’ll be honest, after finishing The Anger of Angels, I needed a writing break. It had taken up 22 years of creative space in my brain and I was mentally exhausted from writing it and from writing. I didn’t want to be creative at least not in writing. Nor did I have any desire to creatively write. So I can’t even say I’ve spent these past months working on Book 2 of The Night of the Hunter series, because I haven’t. I haven’t even given it a thought until about 2 weeks ago when Maia popped into my head. My brain saw for the first time how Book 2 needed to start. I’m ready to dive back into Maia and Corvis’ world again.

As I said in my last post, I rebooted Pretty Vacant One back up and I also rebooted making jewellery for Oliver Kel. Then July arrived and with it 2-3 weeks of mental storms. As quickly as they arrived, the storms left, but I was drained from those just as much as I was drained from writing.

So I didn’t do anything, and it was good. It was good for me. For my soul. For my creative side.

And now that August is coming to an end, I feel ready to dive back into all things creative.

Novel writing, writing for Pretty Vacant One, and making jewellery for Oliver Kel.

There is no perfect balance to being able to do all 3 while I work, train, and sleep but it’s one I’ll figure out and mess up a thousand times over because that is what brings me joy.