The Queen is not dead.
January 12th, 2010
Flotsam and jetsam
Yes, I’m back.
It’s been a year since I resurrected this blog, only to bury it again within weeks. In January 2009, with my memoir on the verge of being released, and the editing of Gifts 2 occupying the rest of my time and thought, I had nothing left for blogging.
Shelving the blog was a wise move, especially considering what happened next. By the end of January I was steadily sinking into a treacly mire of depression. By the end of February, when YEAR hit the market, I was completely submerged. At the very time I needed to be at the top of my game, I could barely function. The irony would’ve killed me if I’d had any solid capacity to think or feel. As it was, I struggled to put two words together. Writing a short email took me all day, and I couldn’t comprehend how I’d ever managed to write a coherent paragraph, let alone a full manuscript.
Sounds melodramatic, I know. But it was bad. Worse, even, than the depression that I wrote about in YEAR.
I’ll be writing plenty more in the days to come about wrestling the black dog (or, more accurately, lying very still under its crushing canine weight). For now, suffice it to say that modern pharmaceuticals saved my life–again. By Eastertime I was back among the living, yet soundly shaken by the ordeal. Shaken enough that I left blogging on the far back burner. While many factors contributed to my crash-and-burn, work overload was definitely one of them.
For the rest of the year I experimented with sane balance in several areas of my life, and was relieved to find some tentative success. In the fall, after finishing a rigorous round of editing on the sequel to The Mother In Me, I stuck a toe back into blogging waters at BCC and remembered how much I enjoyed yakking online. Due to the heavy editing demands of 2008 and 2009, it had been a good long while since I’d done any writing, and resuming the craft felt fantastic.
And so, as the new year rolled around, it seemed fitting to resurrect Queen Serene yet again. I’m not certain how long she’ll stick around this time, but I’m going to enjoy it while it lasts.
Glad you’re along for the ride.
6 Responses
-
-
Always nice to see you on my RSS feed!
-
last week shelah loaned me a stack of books a foot high. i’d been in an uncharacteristic “reading slump”…odd because it’d been many months since i’d cracked a spine, and traditionally i am always reading something. i can’t really account for the dry spell…dysthymia? winter blues? apathy?
at any rate, without any real plan i started in with “Year”…and at 4:40 a.m. when i finally put it down i was actually glad that i hadn’t finished it, so that i had another 40 pages to look forward to when i awoke (a scant 2.5 hours later. yawn.).
losing that night’s sleep might have contributed to my decline in health…which was a bummer BUT it gave me an excuse to stay in bed for a few days and do nothing but sleep and read. (a luxury afforded only the most spoiled…i know it.)
today i returned the foot of books to shelah. yours was my favorite out of all of them. thanks for kick-starting me back into the finest world of literature. it was a beautiful story that i couldn’t put down. so much of parts of me resonated with it.
i loved how your christmas card was written from Thomas’ perspective.
♥ -
Kathryn January 13, 2010 at 2:38 pm
Great to hear from you, Blue! I’m so glad you enjoyed the story. Thanks for your feedback–I really appreciate it.
Kerry and Deborah, glad you’re still around. It’s been a while!
-
I’m here too!
-
Steve Evans January 15, 2010 at 2:09 pm
Good to see!
Leave a Reply
modern pharmaceuticals rock.