I’ve been gone for around 6 months, despite occasionally coming back on here, declaring my comeback... only to disappear again. I’m sorry, and I’m here to try and briefly explain what the hell has been happening.
I guess that the main reason that I have been AWOL is my mental health, as always. I have had a terrible time with it this year, often struggling to get out of bed. All of my energy - every ounce of it - was going ‘keeping up appearances’ and attempting to go about my day-to-day life, trying to make sure that everybody was non-the wiser.
Along with all of this, I encountered a huge loss of confidence. I became convinced that I was terrible at everything - my job, my blog.... my life. How could I run a blog about books and bookselling when I was a joke? So I kept putting it off... and suddenly 6 months had passed.
I also recently lost my Bumpcat after a short, painful battle with lymphoma. Bump was my baby, my best friend, my confidant, my nurse. He was born on my 19th birthday, and I first held him when he was just 4 hours old. One month to the day after his 10th birthday, he was diagnosed with terminal lymphoma. I was, and still am, broken. It is so unfair. A soul like Bump’s should be around for many, many years to come, but this horrible illness took my baby from me. We treated him palliatively for two months, before the illness became too cruel to him. And now my world will be forever darker. I shut down afterwards. I can barely remember the week following.
I have to say, not every single moment has been bleak. During those rare good days when I felt myself, I’ve had some amazing opportunities to do some amazing things, both book related and not. I’ve traveled the country for book launches, worked alongside some amazing authors, and I finally made it back to my beloved Amsterdam for a visit. I’ll try and catch you all up on the majority of these events soon.
Another project that I have been working on, alongside my colleague and ‘work bestie’ Fiona, is our podcast, A Tale of Two Booksellers. It was an idea that we had formed way back last year, and after Fi’s wedding we dived right in. The podcast has been absolutely instrumental in recovering my confidence. The reaction that we have had so far is beyond what either of us expected, and we have had such a fun time building and recording it. I will post a separate post all about it, but if you are curious now, then you can check it out here.
So there we have it. My excuses all tied up in one post. But I really, really do hope that this will be the start of my return. Despite my confidence crisis, I have really missed blogging, and chatting books with you all.
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