If I’d had a little more foresight, I might have posted up something like this at the beginning of the month instead of spending the entirety of May fooling myself into believing I could keep up with my schedule…
ANYWAY.
Like the title says, I’m considering May as a retroactive hiatus month. So, no story this month, and it covers that blog post I missed a few weeks back, too. But! June should be a calmer month (she says, full of optimism and deadly naivete), or at least one with less house guests and a more predictable routine– so I’ll see you then!
In truth, I should have known better. Than to think I would manage even my reduced blog schedule while in the process of moving. Or, in other words, I did not intentionally skip posting for the entire month of July, yet here we are. In August.
Weird.
Unsurprisingly, this also means I haven’t really managed much in the way of fiction writing, either, though I’m gearing back up with that (and even pumped out several hundred words for Tanner and Miranda just last week!) and am eagerly looking forward to settling into a stable writing schedule once again.
In the meantime, some highlights from the past month:
My first visit to Yosemite, complete with a hike up El Capitan
Spending over a week with my family back in my hometown
A grand roadtrip comprising of more than 4500 miles, epic scenery, and all the summer storms I’d forgotten about because they don’t happen in California
Opportunities to catch up with various friends I hadn’t seen in Way Too Long
At some point I’ll definitely upload some of the pictures I took in Yosemite before the smoke descended; with absolutely no exaggeration, that park is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. But that will have to come a different day. Today, I’m just going to have to be satisfied with a quick post to infuse a little life back into this blog– and the fact that I’ve actually got the energy to do some writing tonight.
There’s a couple reasons for that, one of which being the devastating attacks that Azerbaijan made on Artsakh, resulting in the loss of swaths of historically and ethnically Armenian land and the displacement of tens of thousands of Artsakhtsis in the middle of COVID-19 and with winter on its way. It’s not a good situation, and it’s made worse by the fact that it seems like most of the world is turning the other way and pretending that it’s not happening. Actually, to that end, if you’d like to know more about what’s going on, please feel free to click the Contact button up above and drop me a line. I’d be more than happy to share what I know.
Aside from that, it’s mostly just been 2020 being its mangy, feral self. Which is to say, I’m tired– and once I fell out of the habit of updating every week, getting back in was… difficult. But I’m back now, and looking forward to getting back into the proper swing of things.
One last thing, maybe the most important. Advent is always one of my favorite times of year, but this year it seems particularly powerful. Christ didn’t come because everything was fine, but because it wasn’t, and the fact that this year has been so hard for so many of us doesn’t change that. And that is deeply comforting.
Just a quick update this week to let you all know that I’ll be taking the next couple of weeks off of blog posts due to the holiday season! Updates will resume as normal on January 1, 2020. (What?! 2020 already?) Until then, have a Merry Christmas and I hope all your holidays are absolutely wonderful.
F.A. Hakimian 