Hello. Again.

I do want to get better about posting here and maintaining this space, I wrote in a post last January, and then proceeded to not write another blog post for the rest of 2024.

In my defense: 2024 was not my best year. It turned out to be one of the most difficult years—emotionally, mentally, spiritually—and if I'm being completely honest, I can't say that I came through all of it with positive character growth. And 2025 has been, in many ways, a compilation of difficult things too.

I'm still wrestling with that. Still wrestling with the ups and downs of life not going at all in the way that I had envisioned it would.

And blogging was one of the things that fell by the wayside, despite my best intentions.

But I’m also trying to be optimistic and hopeful, because I know what it is to be stuck in the same patterns and how difficult that can be too.

When I wrote that last January, I couldn't have known how difficult it would be to uphold such a statement. Most of the time, I wasn't very optimistic or hopeful. I tried, sometimes, but my comfort zone-loving self was clinging to all the familiar things I could when so many things changed or were out of my control.

This year carries its own difficulties, and much of the weight of last year's too. But that's life, isn't it? It isn't my place to know what is going to happen next, and it isn't something I can control with my whims and wishes. 

What I can do, though, is hold onto the even the smallest bits of joy and happiness and peace. Because despite all the hard times and all the changes, there was, and is, always something bright to look to. 

So, in that spirit: Hello, again.

H A P P I N E S S E S

sitting in the sunshine and talking with loved ones | nostalgia and all its bittersweetness | good stories | the world coming back to life in shades of green and rainbows of flowers | stormy days with just the right amount of coziness | cat purrs | not having to carry grief alone | the flicker of sunlight through blinds cast on the floor | recalling favorite memories with the people who share them | music that instantly brightens my mood | doing something new