2024 brought with it lots of realizations for me. I'm not a New Year's resolution kind of girl, but on December 31, 2023, I resolved to live a more intentional life. I set four guiding intentions for myself:
1) Acceptance 2) Gratitude 3) Positivity 4) Purpose.
And only in setting those intentions did I realize that I've spent the past five or six years in revolving states of grief and sometimes-not-so-quiet rage, leaving little space for much else. Focusing on intentions 1— 3 was surprisingly easy. With a meditation practice focused on abundance rather than scarcity, a mindset of acceptance, gratitude and positivity is very achievable. What wasn't as easy to get in touch with was 'purpose'. After some self- and soul-searching I realized that I had lost all interest in writing books centered around one-on-one human connections, and how we navigate and understand them. So there it was, my creative purpose had expired. And I was grateful in some weird way. The loss of interest gave me room to meaningfully explore at least one other genre (which is a lot of fun, so I absolutely will still be doing more genre-hopping). But ...
... what I didn't admit to myself was that I seriously doubted I would ever write relationship-focused fiction ever again. Thankfully that fever has passed. It'll take me minute to regain my chops but I finally feel like I'm in the mood for something like love, something sweet and quiet, kinda like Lusanda singing that cover of 'Hey Ya!'.
Watch this space for more later ...