My Dear Readers,
I had a lot of plans for this year, like a lot. I bought a planner specifically to use as a blogging planner, and I had every other week’s blog post planned out for my #WriteChain update posts (it’s actually going good). I was even planning on introducing vlogging this year-and I still will. However, things didn’t exactly go according to plan. This post is going to be one of the more personal ones I’ve written. In the past, I’ve drawn a line between my personal life, and my more public writing life. I tried not to blur the line as I wanted to keep a bit of my life to myself, especially my health. Now please don’t panic, I am not posting this to say that I am in poor health. But in order to explain myself, I need to finally share a bit more than I usually do (I’ll try to do this without it being a huge info dump).
For a while now, since somewhere around the end of last summer, I have been dealing with some very persistent new health issues. I’m no stranger to health issues since I first found out that I have chronic ulcerative colitis at 16 when I went into the hospital for it. Since then, I have learned that I have sudden blood pressure drops referred to as Orthostatic Hypotension (thankfully, this one seems reasonably under control). However, this new thing is a bit different to adjust to. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ve not adjusted at all to it. Things are better now, and everything’s calmed down. As I said before, this new health issue, I’ve dealt with since around late last summer. I tried my best to deal with it on my own for a couple of months before finally talking to my mom about it (I have a bad history of this, and should really learn to speak up sooner). We talked back-and-forth and then I went to do my own research before worrying about a doctor visit. Everywhere I looked turned out to be the same result: low cortisol, just as she had said. After a few months of frustration and miscommunication with the doctor’s office, we finally were able to get the right test done to check once and for all if that was what the problem was. We finally got the test results back (a month later, at the end of January) and it was confirmed that I do have low cortisol, and according to the chart numbers, mine is nearly 10 numbers too low (7 out of 15-18). This creates all sorts of problems as there’s more tied in with cortisol. I’ve been dealing with this for months, along with constant overwhelming stress which could possibly trigger a relapse with the colitis. To say my life is a bit ridiculous right now would be a grave understatement. It is exhausting trying to fight all of this all of the time. And I would not wish this upon anyone.
Thankfully things have settled down enough that I feel more like myself again, and like I have room to breathe. But my life over the past few months has been especially hectic and I sadly don’t always have time for social media. It’s also the reason why I’m so behind on my blogging. I would have my blog posts scheduled out in my planner for the month, but I still had to write them. I meant to post this back in January to give a heads up that I was taking a hiatus for a few months while my health and state of mind calmed down to where I felt like I could handle everything again. The last thing I needed on top of everything else was going back to the hospital with a bad relapse of colitis (and I’m currently going on nearly 3 years in remission!). Week after week I kept feeling so overwhelmed with everything all over again and the time just got away from me and, well…here we are now.
But even with the newer health struggles and hard adjustments, there have still been some pretty good things happen over the past few months as well. Some more exciting things that have happened in the past five months (that will probably have more focused blog posts dedicated to them later this year) are:
- I started my new-now about a month and a half old-website, moving my blog to here.
- I reached 1,000+ reads for the first time ever on one of my short stories on Wattpad!!! I’m so excited over this, and thrilled that so many people seem to like what I write so much. I’m currently working on a little treat as a thank you, so be watching here, and on Wattpad for what’s coming. And read the 1k story for yourself here!
- After finding a prompt on Tumblr in January, a spark lit up in my mind that has been, to some degree, constantly on my mind since. And this past week, I was trolling Pinterest for prompts, and that spark lit up like a wildfire. Suddenly, I had my plot. And I’m still freaking out over everything. It has always been my dream as a writer to write a dragon novel, and now it’s actually happening! It’s still in the early planning stages, mind you, but I actually have something. And I can see it all happening in my mind. It’s all just…agh! I can’t wait to share more details, but of course, that will come later on.
I’m pretty friggin excited about the dragon novel finally being in the works, and will most likely be hinting a bit about it over the coming months. As for now, I’m still working on world building. It’ll take me a while to get everything going and be able to visualize my new little world and characters.
And then, of course, there’s quite a list of Wattpad stories I want to start on and/or finish this year, so be on the look out for that too!
And Vlogs are coming later this year, don’t forget about that too.
Ok, I’m done.
Lizanne Glasgow 