Hi, hello. Stepped away, I’m back. Slowly settling into the rhythm of summer school vacation. I took a short social media break, and it was very nice. The problem with social media is that consuming too much starts to feel overwhelming in a very insidious and very damaging way. Even with a carefully curated bubble, you end up having too many signals – “this is what’s important/what you should aspire to/what you should be doing” – that can drown out your own internal values compass. And you can find yourself chasing ideas and goals that aren’t aligned and true to yourself. And being miserable. And by “you”, I mean me.

I needed to re-set. And I made some progress with that (it’s an ongoing process). I missed the good parts of social media – connecting with my peeps – so I’m back, but this has convinced me that it’s perfectly okay to take little breaks, whenever it feels necessary. I am not a slave to the algorithm, lol!

Things have been pretty quiet; between the weather (which messed with more than one set of plans) and the see-saw of my mental health, I haven’t been doing much. Trying to enjoy time with the kids as much as I can before I lose them completely to teenager-dom, and picking away at my hobbies whenever the mood strikes. Gardening has been nigh impossible, thanks to the mosquito apocalypse of 2026, and thrifting has been a bit blah – though I did find a few great pairs of pants lately, and a ring I’m obsessed with. Scrapbooking, of course, never lets me down or disappoints.

I’ve been feeling discouraged about writing (social media strikes again!), so I decided that the best cure for that was … um, editing two books at once. Lol whut?! But, actually, it kinda helped. They’re two very different books (genre, writing style, setting, etc.) and somehow the contrast helped me to see their respective merits more clearly and enjoy them both for what they have to offer. I was having doubts before, but now I’m pretty sure that one of them will be publishable (with a few more rounds of edits). The other one is still up in the air, but it’s a maybe.

As far as reading goes, I’ve been in a bit of a slump, but I think there is light at the end of the tunnel. I’ve been slowly accumulating books to take with me on my annual family trip to BC – which is always a reading fest for me – and I’m excited about diving into them. Meanwhile, I just treated myself to The Clock House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji (the latest in the Murder Houses series, which is one of my faves) as well as The Tokyo Zodiac Murders, which has been on my to-buy list for ages. I’ve already started on the first, and it’s so good!

I’ll share more of my summer reading list soon.

Have a great weekend!