A loud creak sounds across the library as a sheepish-looking woman does her best to creep in. Stealth was never her forté, however, and as the unoiled hinges of the old oaken door gave her away she found herself faceplanting into a huge chaos of spiderwebs that had formed in the small corner she’d turned into, gliding between the tall bookshelf and the wall sconce.

Wiping herself down, face now a delightful shade of rose, she cleared her throat and made her way to her old chair.

Hello friends, it is I, Jaedia, Hannah… whatever you prefer. You know the one, every few months or so I get into the mood to share my thoughts on this, that, or the other with the world on my tiny dusty blog and then pootle off again! I’m not going to sit here and make excuses or promises, because they aren’t that interesting anyway, but I have missed you. Content creation is something that just feels right to me and being able to write always feels like a freedom that other formats just don’t provide.

So what’s the point of this post? I miss blogging. Short and sweet. In particular, book blogging. The community and the content I used to make back when I was writing at Once Upon a Time are two things I miss regularly, fawning over books with like-minded bookworms was always a great time. Of course, the Discord communities I’ve planted myself into are newer homes to me as well which I love dearly, but chatting is very different to creating content, right?

My biggest hurdle, honestly, has been that I’ve barely been reading. One or two books per year, if I’m lucky. No, my post about reading more from 2018 didn’t stick, my mental health has been a chaotic dumpster fire for so long that it’s been a struggle to maintain any habits, really.

That is until I decided I was going to try again at being a dungeon master, and I loved that so much I picked up a second group so a lot of my creative energy goes into worldbuilding and making sure I have adventures and sessions prepared and ready to roll so that my players can steamroll over them and we just improvise what happens next! It’s amazing. My Friday group are in the process of taming a Displacer Beast cub while heading out into danger, while the Sunday group are, I believe, about to petition a group of Goblins with the head of their leader. The stories we craft around a (virtual) table among friends are ridiculous and fantastic and Dungeons & Dragons has become a huge part of my life. I am genuinely so proud of myself for sticking with it for so long that I’m planning content that’s months away, maybe even longer!

I won’t pretend that it has healed me though, it just provided a hobby that I adore and has maintained longevity, which I haven’t managed with anything for years, frankly, and it’s been a massive comfort to enjoy that creative time with friends. Even video games haven’t stuck in recent years. Instead, I got on some new medication, got some new clothes I started wearing (instead of daily pyjamas), and started opening the curtains again. We are also (touch wood) seeing a change in circumstances which I really believe will have us doing a lot better, and so I’m seeing a little light again. I still have trouble with fatigue and brain fog and concentration but being in a genuinely good mood, days in a row, has been fucking wonderful.

That brings me around to the past couple of weeks. I’m regularly beating myself up internally over my lack of reading. I faff about until bedtime and then sleep, no reading. It became something of an executive dysfunction of mine which let me tell you, felt real bad. So chatting with a friend on Discord (hi Pants!) about books, and reading and all that.. I just felt inspired to make a new habit. What wasn’t working before? Telling myself I’d read before bedtime. And guess what, still forcing myself to read what I felt I should be reading. Yep, even without review stress over my head, I was pushing myself to read through series, despite my reading moods changing drastically (I’m sorry, Geralt, I’ll get to you eventually). Clearly these things don’t work for me, so we have to start earlier in the day. Read while I’m eating my cereal, find time in my day to sit and read for a bit, any spare moments early on because the later it gets, the more fickle I get, and I don’t do the things I say I will do later at night, even if I do feel more awake.

So yeah, that’s a lot of blathering on in order to say: I grabbed a random book on my Kindle that seemed intriguing, started reading earlier in the day and making use of “reading sprints” (new to me, I’d only heard of writing sprints before) on a Discord server my friend invited me to (Shelf Space!) and I found I’d read an averaged sized novel in 11 days which for me, I’m sure we can agree, is astounding. Then I wrote a review of it which is currently sitting in my drafts ready for editing. I’m just feeling really pumped about reading again and I missed it so much and it’s so nice to sit and chill and read for any amount of time. Hi!!

TLDR; I read a book, I miss blogging, maybe I can try the thing? Perhaps? No promises. Ok bye.