I’m Back!

So, it’s been four years since I posted on here. Four. Years. To the day. If anyone is still subscribed and sees this, I will be really impressed. A lot has happened in my life during that time, for sure. I got married, I graduated from college, and now I have a beautiful little girl who takes up most of my time. It’s a little mind-boggling when I really think about it. My life is so different now; I’ve grown and changed and learned so much.

In the process, though, I’ve really lost track of my writing and my blogging community. And I miss all of it. I miss interacting with you guys; I miss putting pencil to page. So I’m trying to integrate writing back into my life. I don’t completely know what that looks like yet, but I’m just getting started. I’m prayer journaling again – I had forgotten how much I enjoyed that. I’m trying to journal-journal more, which is off to a rocky start. But I also really want to start blogging again.

I don’t know exactly what that’s going to look like. For now, I’m doing a simple genre reading challenge this year (and trying to read through my bookshelf at the same time), and I’m going to do some updates/reviews each month. The original challenge can be found here. I’m also trying out Storygraph, an alternative to Goodreads, and I’m tracking the challenge there. You can join me there if you'd like, and we can read together!

January’s genre was Memoir/Autobiography, so I read Reflections: Life After the White House by Barbara Bush. This is her second memoir; her first covers her life up to and including the time her husband, George H.W. Bush, was President of the United States. I haven't read that book. This one covers the eight years between that presidency and the inauguration of their son, George W. Bush.

It took me a while to get into it. She seemed like a nice lady, and there were some interesting stories. But there were too many names for me to track. However, once I spent more time in it, I found that I quite enjoyed the book. When I would read it for longer stretches at a time, I could track the many, many people she interacts with a lot better. The craziest part to me was how busy she and her husband were! They both died in 2018, but even in the 1990s, when they were in their sixties, they were both whirlwinds of energy, constantly travelling and speaking. Barbara Bush was a very warm person, and that comes through in her writing. She loved her family, fiercely defended her husband, and believed in her country. Overall, I found the book to be a compelling picture of being a kind person in a busy world.

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So that’s how I started my reading for the year. February’s genre is Romance, so I’m enjoying that so far! I plan to keep blogging updates from the challenge. I would like to blog more than that; if I do, it might be a little random for a while. But I’m glad to be back, and I hope to hear from some of you soon!