This post is going to be long, so you might want to strap yourself in. Think of it this way – I haven’t posted in awhile and I have a lot to say.
Why I stopped writing . . .
I told everyone it was because of my job. In 2013, I got a help desk job with an education company. I started the blog when I worked in retail and it was my way of escaping. I enjoyed writing and I enjoyed working on the site because I wasn’t working on computers all day. Sitting down and working on my computer felt relaxing after carrying heavy furniture and baskets of breakable dishes.
But working in IT means sitting in front of a computer all day, and the last thing I wanted to do when I got home was get back on a computer. I took up cross stitching and kept telling myself that I’d get back into blogging when I got used to it. A year later, and I still wanted nothing to do with computers after the end of my shift.
That’s only half the story, if I’m being honest though. It made sense and seemed to satisfy people who asked me whether I was going to write on the blog again. I’m going to tell you the other half now.
I’ve struggled with depression and anxiety my entire adult life, and probably most of my adolescent life as well. They never go away, they just flow and ebb depending on what’s going on in my life. Some days are really good and some are really bad. And there are days when it’s just there hanging over me like a dark cloud; not really interfering with my life, but omnipresent. For many people with depression, and especially anxiety, change can trigger the bad days – even good changes. My job brought a lot of changes. The initial change of starting a new job, the busy periods in Spring and Fall, and being moved to a new, specialized team all happened within a year. Our work schedules meant that we had less time to spend with our friends. Kris’s contract ended with his previous job and we were concerned about him finding a new one. My dad and step-sister had semi-serious health issues. One set of friends experienced a tragic death. All of this seemed to compound until I found myself in one of the mentally darkest periods of my life.
I had very little motivation to do anything, other than cross stitch, which seemed to be the one thing that lifted my mood. My house was consistently messy, which is very unusual for me. I was to the point where I was only cleaning it when I knew people would come over, because I knew they expected the house to be clean. This increased my depression and made me feel more like a failure. I didn’t even want to think about how long it had been since I wrote a post. I felt like I had let down the people who were still writing for the site and I just wanted it to go away.
Why I’m back . . .
I still love writing. I had been thinking about starting to write my blog again and even started getting excited about maintaining the site again. In a roundabout way, it was my stitching that got me to that place again. I wanted to post my work to my personal website and, in doing so, remembered how much I enjoyed it.
Right about that time, Rhianna contacted me to ask if this site was still active. I took it as a sign.
What will change . . .
I wanted to produce a lot of content when I started this site and kept adding more and more features to my blog. This put a lot more pressure on me to write more often and when I wasn’t able to keep up, it made me feel guilty. I’ve stripped the blog down to the things I enjoy writing about most. “I Heart” will become bi-weekly and “The Space Nerd Files” and “Tab Goes to the Movies” will be showing up when I have something cool to write about. The other categories are going away and there may be an increase in less structured posts. “Geektastic Fright Fest” and “Christmas Gift Guide” will be staying the same, and I hope to still cover Mile High Horror Festival, Denver Comic Con, and the Zombie Crawl, but it will depend on what else is going on in my life.
I’m also making a fresh start. Previous posts will be in the “Geektastic Archive” category and are tagged “Geektastic 1.0″, so you can still read them if you wish. But the main Geektastic blog will be starting fresh as of today.
Thanks for your patience (especially Rhianna and Keith) with me over the last year. I’m excited to be back!
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