A lot has happened since I last wrote here, 5 years ago. A lot of good things, too! But somehow the biggest internal transformation in my life was to turn this online writing into a profession. Into the only way to make my living.
It had its highs (which were really high), and its lows (which were, predictably, really low).
And now I'm settled into a pattern in which I write for much of the week, for much of the month, about things that other people pay me to write about. It's nice to make a living on your own terms. But it's also emotionally exhausting to turn a creative hobby into a job.
But the side-effect, the only side-effect that keeps my head spinning, is not having anything to enjoy at the end of the day. Feeling like a keyboard monkey is an understatement. In a year when I thought understatements are no longer possible.
So I'm back here, in this little corner of the internet, where nobody reads (the relief), and people don't know my name (the relief). I can paste quotes and think thoughts, and throw in photos (both taken and found) and generally not care about views and SEO and analytics and social shares and and and.