Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans. John Lennon

I haven’t posted on the blog for seven months. It’s not that I’ve been lazy. Not that I have been wastin’ away again in Margaritaville, searchin’ for my long lost shaker of salt.

I love to write. It’s my one constant joy in life, where I can lose myself in creating. I have published well over 1,000 encyclopedia articles, journal articles, short stories, and books in my life (mostly academic), so workaholic is probably a more fitting descriptor than bone-lazy.

But, as John Lennon quipped, life got in the way. The last year has been unusually busy and trying. To my normal overloaded time crunch teaching graduate-level college courses in the evening, after my full-time day job, and mixed with non-profit and government work, came some trials that took all of my energy and emotion. The last year has run through a gamut of emotions, from hectic and overwrought, to tumultuous, to dispiriting and distressing and bleak.

I won’t go into details. But blessings can flow from grateful endurance of trials, and I have been blessed from the experience with a deeper understanding of myself, of others, and a greater peace. I lost time on writing. But I gained immeasurably on understanding life. And in the end, the pieces came back together, even if not fitting seamlessly in the puzzle of life.

I am now back to writing. I just completed publishing of Future Jau on smashwords. I am working on the second book in the Hugh Holiday series. (The rough draft has been completed for some time. The hard process of refining the content is underway.) And I have a number of other writing projects, which were near completion a year ago, that I am now putting the finishing touches on.  

It is good to be back.