It’s been some time since I’ve reflected on where I’m at, and a lot has changed for me recently, in really good ways. I’m in an energetic, yet strangely reflective kind of mood right now, so why not write about where I’m at and where I’m heading?
It’s my blog and I’ll ramble if I wanna. Sorry. (Not sorry. That song’s been stuck in my head all week.)
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You might have noticed that I’ve been pretty inactive on my blog for the past few weeks. That’s because for most of May, I’ve been working on reading books by Brené Brown, a shame researcher who has written a number of best-selling self-help books. A teacher of mine who’s been helping me work on my mental and emotional wellbeing recently recommended that I read her work. I figured that a blog post about how these books are helping me would be a good way for me to reflect on my progress so far.
I have a confession. School briefly killed my love for reading. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy the books that I was assigned to read in high school and college—some of my favorite books are books I eagerly dissected in essays and class discussions. My life was just so full of stress, assignments, and mini existential crises that the idea of reading a book that I picked up of my own volition seemed ridiculous.
I’m going to preface this post by saying that I have never been officially diagnosed with a mental illness, but that I have had depressive episodes and tendencies toward social anxiety since high school. This post isn’t intended to do anything more than share my personal experiences. You should seek professional help if you have thoughts of suicide, or harming yourself or others.
As I’ve been struggling with some ups and downs in my personal life and my mental health, I’ve started thinking about how my mental health impacts my writing, and vice versa. As I sat down today (I started writing this on 1/16/18) to write my novel with my brain in a depressive fog, I found that it just wasn’t happening. But then, something weird happened. A poem came out instead—so I decided to write about why I think that happened. If you're reading this, it means that I finally committed to starting my book blog, and you might even like books too! Exciting stuff!! I have been putting off starting this blog since May of 2017, which is when I graduated from NAU with my shiny English degree and a whole lot of uncertainty about what happens next.
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AuthorWriter, reviewer, bookseller, book nerd extraordinaire. Fiction reader at Waxwing Magazine. Archives
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