I’ve taken the year off from writing cons. Not because I don’t like them (let’s be honest, I adore cons), but because I have other things that my vacation time is going towards, and because really, lately, I’m feeling like I’m not doing enough to justify the expense of going to cons.

And yes, I know, impostor syndrome is totally a thing. It’s not that. It’s that I look at what I’ve accomplished in the past, and how I’m feeling like I’m just treading water now.

I’ve been collecting Writer’s Digest every other month from the bookstore, but I haven’t been really reading it, until the May/June 2019 caught my eye. The 5-minute memoir, entitled “Time to Finish,” made me stop and think, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it. It’s actually hanging up in my cube at work, right next to my computer monitor, so I can keep it within my line of sight.

The jist of the story is that life is uncertain, and how many of us can truly know that we will be given time to finish what we want to do? And that got me thinking about Mom, and Brian, and Daithi, and PG, and Jesse, and everyone else I know who didn’t get that long, and certainly wasn’t given time to finish. The narrator at one point talks about time wasted “dilly-dallying” and how there’s no way to get that time back, and how you need to use the time you have now. And I thought about what I’ve not been doing, and started to think about WHY I haven’t been doing it.

I’m still not sure what I want to be when I grow up. I look at my writing and I love a lot of it, but I’m also well aware that I’m writing in worlds that are comfort worlds. I’ve been writing Molly for over 7 years now, and Shanna since college. Sapph has been through several iterations over the years. Perhaps that’s why I’m having such issues with the last Carter’s Cove story (I really don’t want to finish it, because it’s NOT what I wanted it to be). So perhaps it’s time for me to move on to projects that I haven’t been so steeped in. Maybe I’m feeling stale?

That could be it. I’ve been retreating to comfort for the past 3 years. I think it might be time to stretch my legs a little. I want to write Belladonna Dreams, but even Sapph is feeling stale. So I think I’ll put her aside, work on my poetry, and perhaps Blue, since there’s been a lot of Irish music poking at my brain. I’m removing her from the Appalachians and putting her gran in the White Mountains, because that feels right. And since I’m no longer playing in anyone else’s sandbox, I can create my own rules. I also do want to work on Abby, since her story is kind of intertwined with my own grieving process.

So yeah, deep thoughts over the past few days.