I'm Back!

 Hiya peeps! Long time no chat, hu? I basically dropped off the face of the planet for a couple years, and for that I do apologize. I figured an explanation and update was long overdue, and I'm finally able to jump back into this blog and do just that. Read on to catch up with me, and see what I'm up to at the moment.

My last post here was in August of last year - that was not intentional. Life got ridiculously crazy and the dust is finally settling down enough for me to see my writing again. Mostly, the swirling dust was from closing down our business.

I've mentioned it before over the years, but I co-owned an exotic pet shop for several years. It was honestly wonderful to work with so many incredible animals, and it was legitimately a child-hood dream come true. God blessed it abundantly and it grew bigger and faster than we anticipated or were prepared for. We didn't even suffer much during the business closing pandemic of 2020 - ours was considered essential so we were allowed to stay open so people could feed their animals, as we supplied exotic food for exotic pets. It was wonderful to be a small light in peoples' lives during that dark year, and really the business as a whole was amazing in that aspect. It was one of the best experiences of my life, even if it was exhausting.

Because we put everything we had into it, I basically dropped writing for the most part. A necessary trade off, but one that weighed heavily on me. I went from two to three books a year to maybe one, if I was lucky, and that last year or two, I didn't even write at all. It was honestly heartbreaking, writing is one of the staples in my life and I was struggling having to back-burner it and lose all the momentum I had going.

We came to a cross roads with the pet shop, where we either needed to expand and hire employees (not something we'd done prior, we did all the work ourselves) or close down. A brief glimpse of what we were facing on a daily basis: we had over 5 hundred snakes, lizards, rodents, and guinea pigs that all needed daily care, and many needed daily cleaning. We were breeding snakes, lizards, and guinea pigs, which all took special care, vet visits, special diets, and a lot of maintenance year round. We also had hundreds of thousands of insects we were breeding, which needed daily care. For two people, it was insanely exhausting. Amazing, but exhausting. After several years of this, going hard non-stop, no vacations, no breaks, we were burned out.

In the end, we chose to close down. While expanding and hiring employees was an option, we were exhausted and honestly just tired of people - retail sucks, even when it's revolved around wonderful animals. In the rest of our life, I hadn't even finished unpacking our boxes from moving into our house several years ago, I couldn't keep up with the housework which was taking its tole on my mental health, and I didn't have any strength left to write which is also taxing to my mental health. Not to mention, my endometriosis is getting worse so I was in intense pain every day pushing that hard, and was having a difficult time keeping up with caring for the animals and customers.

I am sad it's over, but I'm also glad to be able to focus on writing again, as well as the rest of our life. I don't think we will ever take on that kind of business again in the future, but it was something God had been showing me since I was a little girl that He'd have in my life for a time, and it not only came to pass, but exploded more than I ever imagined. I consider it a massive success and I'm glad for the experience. I took last year to get my house back in order, get our family in a new rhythm without the pet business being the priority, and got my health back to a stable place of management.

So what am I doing now?

To jump back into writing, I'm participating in NaNoWriMo! It's what gave me the push to finally finish a novel in the first place 8 years ago, and is the perfect way to get me back into the ebb and flow of writing a novel. I'm 5k words into the goal so far, on track with the first three days of the contest, and will be adding to that word count today. 

To follow my progress, I've reopened my Twitter and Facebook accounts and am going to be posting there, as well as occasional blog posts here! If you prefer to read on Wordpress, I also have the same content cross-posted there. I've also revamped my website, and added a store for those who prefer to buy from authors directly, so be sure to check those out!

Thank you for reading and for following along my writing journey, I appreciate each one of you. God bless, and keep moving forward!

Ciao for now,

Rosie