This, 2019 has been a rough year. I changed jobs, a family member had cancer and went through chemo and radiation, another family member has been ill, and then we have the whole government thing here in the US. This has been a year of transition and change, and rough patches.
Transitioning from one job to the next is always rough, especially as I moved from one with a top-down leadership style to one that focuses on teamwork. After nearly 20 years of working in top-down styled workplaces, moving into a teamwork environment has been a more difficult transition than I expected. In the past I planned for the first 6 months of any job transition to mean that I would work much less on my outside pursuits of writing, blogging, reading, art, crafting, and garden. And wow, was all of that impacted and for longer than 6 months. Hell, I’m going on a year and I’m just settling in. Add to all that I screwed up my shoulder and had a carpal tunnel flare up and whoa a recipe for not wanting to sit in front of the computer.
When I transitioned I had quite a few blog posts partially written and images shot so this blog didn’t see much of an impact until June. At that point, the combination of all the things in my life hit the fan and I simply was not able to focus on the blog much at all. My plan for 2020 is to get back into writing more posts, focusing on a few art materials, getting back into my professional ink series, and my cheap pens from China.
Another thing I might focus on is the use of the materials. Some of you may (or not) know that I started another blog, FermentStuff.com a place to focus and document my fermentation and gardening efforts. I use pens and pencils heavily in my documentation of my garden and ferments. Recipes must be documented and seed purchases recorded.
After I wrote the above I was informed that my Grandmother passed away. Despite her advanced age and frailty, it was unexpected. As with any death, it has put me into an introspective mood.
If there is one thing that 2019 going into 2020 taught me it is that we’re all human and life is short. Despite all my best intentions of writing and exploring art and writing materials, sometimes, life just gets in the way and things, like blogging, must be set aside for the moment. For now, I’m looking closely at how I use my stationery in my other hobbies- podcasting, writing fiction, and gardening; and let’s not forget the DayJob. It is always surprising to see how the stationery I love gets used in the pursuit of all my other interests. Stationery is a support and a tool. And with that thinking, I’ll be exploring a bit of that in this blog. I’m not sure how those posts will look, but they’ll be there. Despite taking a bit of time off from this blog, I’ll be back, with hopefully more reviews, weird little writings, some art, and an assortment of other written things.
If you aren’t already following my instagram, my facebook, and twitter you should. Though I’ll warn you Twitter is where I get salty and rant a bit and my Instagram is a lot of food and cooking pictures, and if you don’t like plants you won’t like my instagram. You can also follow my other blog, FermentStuff.com for more cooking, growing, and queered urban homesteading activities.