Well I haven't written on this blog for about 5 years for a whole host of reasons. For much of 2018 and 2019 I was extremely bored and burnt out on my job and therefore not inspired to write; to make matters worse, my father died in that same time period, adding sadness and loss to the existing boredom and lack of inspiration. The summers of those years were the exact opposite with a whirlwind of excitement including getting engaged in 2018, getting married in 2019, and traveling to such destinations as Mexico, Spain, Portugal, and Japan as well as home country destinations like Vegas and the Grand Canyon.
Then 2020-2022 saw us hit with the Coronavirus Pandemic, and life for a lot of people was put on pause in one form or another. For many, that meant working and/or studying at home and online. Traveling was reduced. Friends and family saw each other less. It seemed like a lot of people started marrying and having kids out of boredom, but it could just be that I'm at that age when people naturally do those things anyway. Regardless of reason, many friends became less regular in their visits into my life, which for 3 years followed an incredibly steady routine that consisted mostly of 6 things in descending order of frequency: working, sleeping, drinking, video games, board games, and football.
A steady routine, in my experience, is the enemy of inspired writing... unless of course writing itself is a part of that routine. Sadly, though, I did not prioritize this. When you do the same things every day or every week or every year, things stop feeling noteworthy. When people stop seeing each other in person, they start posting a lot more online... to the point where it can seem overwhelming to a casual user like me. So the explosion of online activity from others was overwhelming, my own frequency of needing to work online was increasing, and the amount of novelty in life was decreasing; for these reasons I stopped writing almost entirely.
Now it is 2023, and China, my home of the past 9 years, has finally lifted the increasingly annoying restrictions related to Covid-- and life feels like it can resume freely. Opportunities and possibilities abound. I am planning a long-term sabbatical to travel and see friends and family, while also seeing if we can't get my wife immigrated. In that time, it is my hope that I will become much more regular in my writing and reflection. Perhaps my wife and I will even start up some sort of video channel/travelogue about road tripping, international travel, multicultural relationships, language learning, or immigration. A lot of excitement lies ahead... preceded by a lot of work preparing.
I am hitting the play button on life again.
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