{"id":76,"date":"2019-12-31T14:26:00","date_gmt":"2019-12-31T14:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/2019\/12\/31\/looking-back\/"},"modified":"2020-10-26T20:57:57","modified_gmt":"2020-10-26T20:57:57","slug":"looking-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/2019\/12\/31\/looking-back\/","title":{"rendered":"Looking Back"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Today is the last day of the year and all I have to say is good riddance. It has been a pretty awful year and because it has been awful I have struggled to read and to write blog posts. Well, I have struggled to read books that I want to write blog posts about. I have read plenty but I have read a lot of junk and reread a lot of old favorites. I have many books on my shelves that I am sure I will love and that I am sure I will want to write about but it just sounds like so much effort. I want to have read them but I don’t want to read them right now. If I read them now I have to concentrate and mark passages. I have to analyze what I want to say and how I feel. And then, what if I waste a good book on a bad day? What if I read something amazing and don’t properly appreciate it because I am too stressed and anxious? The other day I decided I wanted to change this. I wanted to read a big, fat novel; the kind of novel that would take days to read. I pulled a few off my shelves and asked on Twitter which I should choose. The general consensus was that Middlemarch <\/i>was the best choice. I have reread three books since then but I still haven’t started Middlemarch. <\/i>I will. One of these days. It is still sitting on my coffee table. I look at it longingly and I pick up something else. I just can’t. I want to but I can’t.<\/p>\n

For a long time, I have thought of this as a book blog but over the last year I haven’t written very many book reviews. Is it still a book blog? Does it matter? I don’t know. I am pretty sure I have lost some readers because I meander my way through blog posts like this one, talking about books but never analyzing books and rarely reviewing books. But at the same time, I used to also write a lot of posts about life, kids, things we did. I don’t do that as much lately either because of things going on right now. So much of my life and my thoughts involve the personal business of other family members. I can’t write about that.<\/p>\n

Where is this going and what is the point of this post? I don’t know. I think the spark has been missing from my blog lately and that makes me sad. I am not sure I can do much about that for now. We have to ride out a few things and hope for better times. Maybe then enthusiasm and energy will return.<\/p>\n

Not everything about this year has been terrible. My daughter and I went to Scotland and had a wonderful time. My husband and I went to New Hampshire and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. I have read some good books. Some of the stresses are starting to improve. My daughter is enjoying her technical high school and just had to choose which shop she is specializing in. The cat had a growth removed from his mouth and does not have cancer. I have discovered that I really like poetry thanks to my “Poem for a Thursday” <\/i>posts. My husband and I have been able to spend more time together. There are bright spots.<\/p>\n

So, what do I want for next year? I want peace and a low-stress life. I want better health for various family members. I want to read really good books. I want to write more. I want to pick up my camera more often. I want to have fun. I want to go places and do things and not merely exist.<\/p>\n

I want to look ahead and smile.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today is the last day of the year and all I have to say is good riddance. It has been a pretty awful year and because it has been awful I have struggled to read and to write blog posts. Well, I have struggled to read books that I want to write blog posts about. I have read plenty but I have read a lot of junk and reread a lot of old favorites. I have many books on my shelves that I am sure I will love and that I am sure I will want to write about but it just sounds like so much effort. I want to have read them but I don’t want to read them right now. If I read them now I have to concentrate and mark passages. I have to analyze what I want to say and how I feel. And then, what if I waste a good book on a bad day? What if I read something amazing and don’t properly appreciate it because I am too stressed and anxious? The other day I decided I wanted to change this. I wanted to read a big, fat novel; the kind of novel that would take days to read. I pulled a few off my shelves and asked on Twitter which I should choose. The general consensus was that Middlemarch was the best choice. I have reread three books since then but I still haven’t started Middlemarch. I will. One of these days. It is still sitting on my coffee table. I look at it longingly and I pick up something else. I just can’t. I want to but I can’t. For a long time, I have thought of this as a book blog but over the last year I haven’t written very many book reviews. Is it still a book blog? Does it matter? I don’t know. I am pretty sure I have lost some readers because I meander my way through blog posts like this one, talking about books but never analyzing books and rarely reviewing books. But at the same time, I used to also write a lot of posts about life, kids, things we did. I don’t do that as much lately either because of things going on right now. So much of my life and my thoughts involve the personal business of other family members. I can’t write about that. Where is this going and what is the point of this post? I don’t know. I think the spark has been missing from my blog lately and that makes me sad. I am not sure I can do much about that for now. We have to ride out a few things and hope for better times. Maybe then enthusiasm and energy will return. Not everything about this year has been terrible. My daughter and I went to Scotland and had a wonderful time. My husband and I went to New Hampshire and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. I have read some good books. Some of the stresses are starting to improve. My daughter is enjoying her technical high school and just had to choose which shop she is specializing in. The cat had a growth removed from his mouth and does not have cancer. I have discovered that I really like poetry thanks to my “Poem for a Thursday” posts. My husband and I have been able to spend more time together. There are bright spots. So, what do I want for next year? I want peace and a low-stress life. I want better health for various family members. I want to read really good books. I want to write more. I want to pick up my camera more often. I want to have fun. I want to go places and do things and not merely exist. I want to look ahead and smile.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1781,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life-lately"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2534,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions\/2534"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}