2024 was a big year. In some ways it was a tremendously groundbreaking and exciting year for me, and in other ways (particularly on the national scale,) it was a pretty dark year. Here I’m going to focus on the stuff that’s closer to home.

Moving Forward

One of the things I accomplished in 2024 that I’m most excited about: getting over my burnout and starting to write again. It felt great to get back into the swing of things. The stories and creativity that I thought I’d lost turned out to still be there, and that was a massive relief. I have a ton of story ideas waiting to be written, but right now I’m focusing on cleaning up and finishing those that were already in progress. Needless to say, I’d be writing a lot more if I wasn’t also working a traditional job– but that’s the society we live in today.

I often joked that the Other Job was eating my life, and that’s why my presence as an author was slowly fading. I did an undeniably poor job of keeping up with friends, staying active in writing groups, and staying on top of schedules for my blog and Patreon– not to mention actually writing books.

But in a very real sense, the Other Job consumed my life. I lost touch with most of my local friends outside of work (although I made new friends at work.) After I got out and started to try to reconnect, I learned that several of the people I knew had died. Others are gone, moved to parts unknown.

Worse yet, for me, the other job consumed my ability to write and be creative. It happened so gradually that I didn’t even feel it happening, and what I did notice was easy to attribute to stress and lack of sleep. As in, “I’m just tired, I’m sure this’ll be easier after I get some sleep.” Or “I’m just stressed out– I’m sure I’ll be back to normal when I’m not.”

So it came as a shock that, once I left the other job, things didn’t go back to normal. I wasn’t the same person, and I still couldn’t plot complicated stories or focus well enough to write. And that was absolutely horrifying.