Breaking the silence
I didn’t really intend for it to happen, but somewhere along the path life got in the way. I suppose it started back in early 2020 with the onset of the covid restrictions. Life changed pretty quickly then. I went from having a routine with some free time, to having my son at home full-time for distance learning and barely being able to leave the house. I didn't have the time to think of anything for myself, let alone sit down and write. I suppose we were all just in survival mode at that time.
But we made it through those dark days and are still here. Just somehow I haven't quite been able to bring myself back to the keyboard, to get back into the swing of posting regularly again. Everything had already changed so much and everything felt so different. As I've written about in other early posts, I started writing around the time my dad had been diagnosed with a terminal brain tumour. I just felt compelled to write at that time, probably to help process the things that were happening around me in my personal life. But write I did and as I found my feet, Arabian Notes grew beyond anything I could have imagined - people did read it! But a lot of things changed along the way. By the point the world had gone back to normal and I finally had the time to go back to writing, in between managing family life I was already working hard to manage a chronic health condition and try to get some balance and normalcy back in my life. You might even say that working to regain health is a full time job. It certainly took a lot of time and effort (and still does! It's a constant balance.). But there was also the not insignificant fact that my mum had now passed. Writing felt different and I felt empty and uninspired for a long time. That is to say - while I still had plenty of ideas and would still make note of them all over the place, somehow I just couldn't bring myself to develop those ideas and write them into existence.
I suppose there was always the idea that even if no one read my blog that at least my mum would. And to my surprise plenty of you did read it, but now that my mum was no longer there to read it things felt very different. I needed to sit back and take stock, and this is something I've continued to ponder. I've kept my blog here, I can't quite bear to say goodbye to it with all the work I've put into it over the years, but at the same time - it's become too time consuming to manage with all the technical aspects that go into running a self-hosted blog: compiling, organising and resizing images, SEO, creating post artwork, web links, dealing with layouts, designs, and technical troubles... I JUST want to write!
My focus has changed along the way too - my personal circumstances have made health and wellness a much higher priority. And while I'm still living here in Abu Dhabi I've been here 12 years now so my view of the city has changed - I don't always see everything with that same 'shiny new' outlook I once did. So that brings me to what's next. What is next? I'm still not sure. I still have ideas that are in keeping with the Arabian Notes niche and I might even get around to publishing some of them sometime. But I'm also toying with the idea of starting a new stream for my writing so I can focus on other things including health and wellness which doesn't feel right to post about here. But as to what form or where that will take shape I haven't fully decided. All I know is that it needs to be fuss free to allow me to concentrate purely on the love of writing.
Addendum: Some time back I did sign up for a Substack account to follow other people who write stuff and might be tempted give that a whirl for starters. You can find me there @lindseyparry.
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