I can’t believe the summer is almost over here in the northern hemisphere. I’m actually a bit giddy with excitement over it. I very much do not like summer, and I’m so ready for autumn to arrive. Plus, the cooler weather means it’s getting closer to when I’m traveling out to California to meet one of my best friends for the first time ever! I keep joking with my mom that I’m finally meeting an Internet friend in real life after nearly two decades of making friends virtually, but given that this friend comes to me from my best friend from high school’s fiance, there’s a whole lot less risk involved. Read: actually none.

And perhaps it’s this dislike of summer, or just the sticky humidity that’s been slowly trying to suffocate those of us in New England, but I’m really tired. I don’t think it’s actually been noticeable in the blog because I’m good at putting on a front, but I think that if you peered closely enough, you’d probably see evidence of it. Normally, I have posts prewritten about a month in advance, and I start thinking of posts for the following month either a full month prior or in the first week. Right now, as I’m drafting this, it’s the beginning of July, and I a) have only July’s posts scheduled (lol but not written!) and b) have no ideas for August posts. And while, sure, it’s the first week of July, and there’s still so much time left, I also don’t really have the will to think up any ideas.

That sounds a bit harsher than I meant it to. There are a lot of factors playing into the mood I’ve been in lately, and I think it’ll be easier to describe where my head’s at when you can see it all combined:

• Andrew’s book, while thrilling to write, is a lot of work. It’s mentally & emotionally exhausting, and it’s requiring a lot of research, even more so than I was anticipating. I’m doing A LOT more outlining than I have in previous books, and while it’s making for a much smoother writing process, it’s also requiring more out of me than ever before. I’m actively writing it, too, which means that a lot of my brain power is going to it pretty much every day.
• I have a full time job! I know I’ve talked about this before, but I do work in an office during the day, and I’m usually pretty busy.
• In addition to that, I have a part-time job! Currently, I’m only teaching yoga once a week, but I’m about to add on two more classes, plus pick up some desk hours at the gym where I’m teaching. I’ve been wanting to do it, and I’m grateful that it’s not something I have to do to support myself financially, but it’s still going to be more time away.
• My reading has suffered big time. I mean, I posted an entirely separate post explaining why I was ending my Pride celebrations early, and it was 90% due to the many, many books that I disliked. I don’t want to say that my Pride books put me into a slump because they didn’t, but I’m definitely less excited to read than I was. Prior to June, I was on an every day reading streak, which I just could not believe, and I thought I might be able to keep it up for the whole year. And then, well–I went away to Maine, driving up after work so that I arrived at around 7PM, and I hated my current read so much that I just could not fathom forcing myself to read it when I was tired from driving, and it was hella late at night when we finally finished our movie. And even though I knew that this would officially break my streak, I decided not to read, and it wasn’t the last time. I went away to New York at the beginning of July, and the same thing happened. After five hours in the car, I just didn’t have it in me to stay awake after the excitement of arriving and getting settled. Which was weirder than in June because I was reading Queen of Air & Darkness, and I was definitely excited to be reading that. Either way, the tl;dr of it is that my reading has slowed down, and while that’s been a bummer, I’m also trying to have grace for myself regarding it.
• I have been consistently blogging since 2017. I originally started this blog in 2016, but set it to private and used it as a space to get out my thoughts for one of my books. Two books in, though, I realized that I wanted to talk about books on a public space, so I opened up the blog in July 2017. I didn’t have a schedule, and my posting frequency was very inconsistent, but I started doing monthly wrap-ups, I started kind of doing discussion posts, and I put together my first top reads of the year post. It wasn’t until the second half of 2018 before I started picking up TTT posts and trying out some semblance of a schedule that mostly wouldn’t stick until I gave it a real effort in 2019. 2020 was the first time the blog saw an actual schedule, and I settled in my MTW with Friday wrap-ups and occasional Thursday Thousand short stories that is now my jam.

Actually, yeah, that really does outline it well.

Recently, I was watching Good Mythical Morning, and they were announcing their annual week-long summer break, and it occurred to me that I, too, was allowed to take breaks. It’s totally okay if I don’t read a few days here or there. It’s okay if I let my focus drift more toward my writing than anything else. It’s okay if working a full time + part-time job is wearing at me a little. It’s okay if I want to climb instead of do yoga. It’s okay if I want to take a break from blogging.

I do want to make one thing abundantly clear, though: this is a break, not a hiatus. A planned break where I slowly refill my well so that, come September, I’ve got a bunch of ideas for discussion posts and me just being my general chaotic self to the maximum degree. I’m also still going to be active! I plan on continuing to blog hop with my usual frequency, I’m still going to post a wrap-up, and I know, with confidence, that I’m going to be back in action after a month off. I just need some time to relax for a bit, to not have anything in the wings that I need to work on. I won’t lie, I’m excited at the prospect of some time off, and it’s showing me that I should, perhaps, take time off occasionally from the blog so I can continue to fill the well and so that I don’t suddenly find myself dragging my feet until I’m taking a whole month off.

Either way, this is it until September, and I hope you have a wonderful last month of summer!