I went away for a while. Not far. I still creeped on blogs. I read reviews. I followed a ton more people on book twitter. I kept up with the news in publishing and bought more books than I needed. Even my local library is up and running. I’m not sure it should be up and running, but that is another problem. 

I read and read and read. I formatted reviews in my head. I recommended books to friends and coworkers. 

But I stopped writing. 

Whenever I sat at my laptop to get all of these bookish thoughts and opinions my brain turned to fog. I couldn’t string meaningful sentences together.  I wasn’t coherent, cohesive, or frankly interesting. 

I was also struggling. That doesn’t make me unique in this pandemic, but it made me realize that just because my family had made it through the first year of a global health crisis  healthy and physically unscathed we still had our own battle wounds. My boyfriend was unemployed for a long time. I’ve been dealing with a chronic pain issue that required physical therapy – something that took an extra 4 months to start. 

I’ve had relationships with family and friends dramatically changed by opinions on masks, politics, and the soul of my country. I watched what happened on January 6th with horror and a sense that this was always the direction the US was headed. I couldn’t think clearly the rest of the week. Even this week is a little shaky. 

And since I am still working primarily from home. I get wicked screen fatigue. Frantically checking twitter for news on impeachment and then instagram for dog pictures isn’t helping, but it does create a bit of a balance. 

We’re living in a brave new world. I’m learning to cope with lots of books and tea. Some days they help more than others. 

This is all to say tentatively that I am back. I’ll try to come up with more bookish thoughts and reviews. I miss you all. The bookish community is amazing and I want to be a part of it instead of just lurking in the shadows.