A Fresh Start After a COVID Year

Hi, Everyone!

Longtime blog subscribers: Thank you for hanging in there with me while I stepped away from my blog and as we all persevered through the past year.

New subscribers: Thank you for your interest in my work. With so much to read online, my aim is for my writing to be worthy of your reading time.

Sadly, the 2020 pandemic, and all that came along with it, deflated my desire to write. I also lost interest in reading. Crazy, I know. Even more, the crisis cut out the occasions we had to interact with others, which so often are my sparks for new stories. You probably felt this yourself — a lack of motivation and inspiration for partaking in activities that once were a daily and enjoyable part of your life.

How are you feeling now? With the advent of 2021, I still felt the motivation lack, but I also came to understand that things will never be the same. With that, I decided it was time to jump back into my blog writing even though I didn’t yet have a plan or any new writing to share. Of course, as soon as I made that decision, my creativity began to flow, and here we are today with my first blog post in over a year.

What’s funny is that, when I read through my personal Facebook posts from 2020, I saw that I was writing throughout the pandemic. I shared plenty of stories; 2020 was a unique and fascinating year, and we all had much to discuss.

Starting with a new and improved website is a good kickstarter. I read through my six years of blog posts and kept only a few for the launch. The Candela WordPress theme has a unique portfolio display, and the cleanness of its layout and typography made it my pick. When you visit my home page, you will see a portfolio set of my work displayed by type. I will add regularly to the work samples that you’ll find in the set. As my portfolio increases, the work will give anyone who visits a clear idea of my creative style.

Click here to see the portfolio/home page. Once there, you can either click on the featured work or click on a portfolio type to see my writing collection and samples. For example, click here to see my Fiction portfolio page. More to come!

On the home page is a menu icon (three bars) you can click to visit my About, Subscribe, Contact, and other website pages.

Currently, I am not active on social media for my writing, but that may change. I will add links via the website if I do jump back into that type of media. In the past, I posted frequently to Instagram and Twitter — entertaining but time-consuming.

Many of you let me know how much you enjoyed my first Story of the Month (SOTM). This is a self-challenge to bring you a solid work of writing each month, fiction and non-fiction. For now, I will use themes associated with each month or perhaps something newsworthy. My first story, published last Sunday, has an Easter theme. The month of May will highlight motherhood. I plan to have a lot of fun writing these stories, and I hope you will enjoy reading them. Click here to see my SOTM page that includes my first, along with teasers for early 2021 months that I will add later to fill out the beginning of the year.

How’s that for a fresh start? It’s good to be back. Let me know in the comments how things have been going for you during this pandemic.