I don’t even know where to start with this. I kind of fell off the map there for a while. It wasn’t intentional. Short version: right after we moved, I had bad flares of multiple chronic illnesses. I got diagnosed with ADHD due to extremely low serotonin, and was also diagnosed with autism. Short version: I was exhausted all the time, sleeping up to 14 hours a day, and I couldn’t concentrate or remember anything. Reading became a chore. I couldn’t focus on a book for more than a page, and for about a year I wasn’t even listening to audiobooks because my concentration was so bad I needed dead silence to complete the smallest task.

Three years on, I’m doing a lot better. I have new and adjusted meds, some different coping skills, and a good care team looking out for me. I am finally back to the point where I can not just read, but remember what I read and enjoy it again.

In that interim period, I’ve decided that I need to change my focus a little so that I’m working more intensively on fewer things. Reading is one of the things I want to hone in on, because it feels like a part of me is missing.

I also took time off from writing, but I’m back at it now in a much more relaxed way. I’m trying not to give myself hard deadlines or put too much pressure on myself. I’m working on a rewrite of a cozy mystery I started a few years ago, trying to get that into shape so I can query it.

The past three years I’ve had to really look at my priorities, and sadly cut things out of my life. Things that I missed, goals I wanted to reach, things I wanted to do and places I wanted to go. But my body is no longer capable of Doing All The Things, at least not right now, and until it is, this is what I have to work with.