Returning From Hiatus

So, I kind of took an unannounced hiatus. I have no excuse for this, other than... I just didn't feel like it. Over time, I had been losing motivation. I lagged on my story writing, either not doing anything at all, or opening the document and accomplishing little to nothing. My weekly blog posts often got put off until the last minute. I would intend to write them earlier, but often that didn't happen. I'd pound them out late Tuesday night, sometimes so late it was technically Wednesday.

Then at some point, I started to think, "Well, if I miss one week, it won't be the end of the world, right?" And that turned the steep, slippery slope into a landslide. It became easier to excuse myself for skipping a week, which led to a second week, which led to me neglecting my blog for several months.

I had contemplated taking a hiatus for a while. I was going to write a post explaining that I was going on hiatus, but every time I started, I couldn't decide how to phrase it. And to some extent, it felt like I was just making excuses not to be productive, giving myself permission to be lazy and slack off.

Granted, the past couple of years haven't exactly been a walk in the park. Unless that park happens to be on fire, and plague doctors are wandering around, and people are screaming and panicking, and evil politician monsters are yammering on about elections, and Green Day is singing 'Wake Me Up When This Decade Ends' while huge meteors are striking the Earth.

On the other hand, I was kind of struggling with motivation before the insanity of 2020. While I'd love to pile all the blame on the events of last year, evidence suggests it wasn't the sole issue. It certainly didn't help, though, and I feel that my motivation and overall mental health took a beating during that time.

I've had different ideas for things to do, whether it's topics for blog posts, story ideas, or other things. But ultimately, I've lacked the drive to follow through with much of it. I left a lot of productive tasks, like blogging and working on stories, to just gather dust. Part of me feels like I should be forcing myself to buckle down and do things, but another part is like, "What if I took a break?" I still wonder sometimes if the problem is truly that I'm burned out or something, or if taking time off is a bad choice. I also hate that I'm not writing much, or focusing much on half the stuff I used to devote more time to.

Moving on to the actual point of this blog post, I've decided to finally end my long hiatus, and return to my blog. Granted, I won't be going back to my normal posting schedule of churning out a post every week. It'll probably be more like a post every two or three weeks, working at a slower, more laid-back pace.

I'm going to try returning to some of my prior commitments, at least. Maybe in the future, I'll get back to publishing a post every week. And perhaps later, I'll return to my stories, instead of just making a few notes once a blue moon, and ignoring everything the remainder of the time. But one step at a time.

You can look forward to my next blog post a couple weeks from now. Be on the lookout for a Christmas post, to be followed later by a series of ramblings about my life the past several months. And then from there... Well, I'll figure it out when I get there.