Well, it’s about time to get back to blogging again.

Yeah, I am starting to miss writing and sharing my thoughts about whatever on this blog. However, I know is that I won’t be writing everyday and there won’t be any kind of schedule of when I will publish. Those days are in the past, now I get to do this blogging thing as something fun, not something that I “have to do”.

There might even be days when the brain and fingers get working too well together and I post multiple posts. 🤪

Although looking back there ain’t a bit of doubt in my mind that I needed a break from feeling like I had to write daily (after doing pretty much that for over 14 years). Everything came to a head in 2022, when I finally was totally burnt out and frustrated in about too many things and blogging was one of them. After fighting those feeling, the crap that goes along with being an injured runner for most of 2022 and not being all that successful in much of anything lately, I decided to shut things down. Hell, I even stopped daily journaling for a while as well, which was a major indicator of how burnt out I had gotten.

For the past several months I have focused on relaxing and getting back to doing things that I enjoy doing and more importantly want to do.

It was time well-spent. 

I learned a lot, thought about what is important to me, simplified many things, gained a bit too much weight, and will probably be sharing some of those lessons over the next few months. 

The question is now — what do I write about?

Initially I’m going to focus on how my returning to running after over a year lay-off due to injury and going to the gym is going. Yeah, that includes my battle with loosing the 20 pounds that needs to disappear, like yesterday. There might be a few quips on how my fantasy baseball season is shaping up, the misadventures of my new D&D adventure group (yes, I’m doing it in person) and how I am liking 5e compared to 2e, and if I am seeing any improvement in my efforts to paint miniatures.

Along with, whatever else comes into my mind and then becomes something that I want to share.

Nothing too overly thrilling or anything serious that will take the world by storm, pretty much just few of an old guy’s wandering thoughts on interests that I have and enjoy.

I’m still not back to running regularly, the left knee surgery recovery is going in spits and spurts. However, I do know that the knee surgery was the correct thing because I am doing things now that I couldn’t last summer — so that is good.

Unfortunately, I’m still hanging in there trying to find that pain-free mile with the knee and it has proven to be rather elusive, (much less getting back to thinking about training for a marathon – maybe in 2023 if the knee continues to slooowwwlllly improve). At my last visit the good surgeon predicted a 6-8 month recovery period before I got back to running regularly (if ever), since there was more damage in there than he originally thought and after being on the table for 2 1/2 hours, for a 45 minute operation on November 28th. It has left me with more things to heal than we expected. As much as I didn’t want him to be right and have done my best to reduce the timeframe, it seems like his prediction is going to be better than mine. 

Especially, since the recovery has been left to my shiny object thought process since the first part of January.

During this time away — my blogging sabbatical, I discovered that I was stressing out way too much about which note-taking app I should use, I eventually went back to using Apple Notes, but since it looks like I’ll be writing regularly again, I will go back to using Reflect Notes. A single place to jot down and attempt to tie together all those random thoughts I have running loose inside the old noggin and need a place to call home outside of it. That kind of free-form journaling in Apple Notes leaves a lot to be desired and I have always liked the way that Reflect Notes does things, I just ain’t a fan of the $15 a month charge, but finally accepted that I needed to just do it.

Then I got to learning Dungeons & Dragons 5e and figuring out Pathfinder 2e, along with getting back into painting miniatures again (some of which I have share here). The TTRPGs are something that I enjoyed and never totally stopped keeping tabs on, but I never got around to wanting to play in person all that much until recently. I also started wasting time or is that investing time in RPG computer games like Wrath of the Righteous. Yeah, the computer game does bring out the worst in me at times and gets the bp up a bit higher than I want. But even so I still enjoy doing them.

I’m even thinking about buying a cheap bow and getting back into archery again, once the snow is gone.

Fantasy baseball is right around the corner and that is something that is another time suck that I have to not let my worst tendencies rule and make over a hundred moves during the course of the season. This year, I gotta keep it a lot more reasonable. I do have four leagues going, so that will slow down some of the need to change things for change’s sake.

These are all things that I enjoy doing and look forward to, even if some of them bring out that next shiny object thinking process that I go into far too often.

All I know is that at this point, that sense of dread of “having to” do something is gone and it is a good feeling.

Looking forward I know without a doubt this going to be strictly a personal blog

The other thing is I am going speak my mind, write how I write and follow the What You See Is What You Got kind of writing. If you are looking for perfect grammar and by the book writing style, look elsewhere. I purposely got rid of Grammarly and no, I’m not going to get into the AI revolution and have the computer write my posts for me (although I did think about it-that is something that would make me look a whole lot smahter than I really am). I figure there will be enough of computer-generated writing and videos from too many other sources, that I don’t need to throw my hat into that ring. No, the stuff you will be reading here will be the thoughts of a human being with many of the warts and farts still lingering, not the amalgamation of human kind’s thoughts as interpreted by an algorithm. Even though the algorithm is assuredly a better storyteller and a helluva lot smarter than I am.

Hopefully, you come along for the adventures and misadventures, that I tend to have and let’s see where all this goes over the next few years.