[Official Blurb] The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Kimberly @ Caffeinated Book Reviewer. It’s a chance to share news. A post to recap the past week, showcase books and things we have received and share news about what is coming up for the week on our blog. This is your news post, so personalize it! Include as much as you want or as little. Be creative, it can be a vlog or just a showcase of your goodies. Link up once a week or once a month, you decide. Book haul can include library books, yard sale finds, arcs and bought books..share them!

• Enter your link on the post-
• Sundays beginning at 12:01 am (CST) (link will be open all week)
• Link back to this post or this blog
• Visit others who have linked up
• Read this week’s #TheSundayPost!

Hallo, Hallo dear hearts!

and bless you if you’ve held out a candle of hope I’d return!

This blog post germinated originally in March,

however, I had several MAJOR life changes between April & June;

specifically: an unplanned relocation and a new job which included 5x weeks
of training with a serious commute attached to it before I started to work locally.

AND, then, I thought I could finish and tweak this during August.

Best laid plans, as it took until the END of SEPTEMBER / EARLY OCTOBER
to post by the 8th of October! Though, *cough* that did involve a nearly dead computer!

In regards to my life behind the blog:

As you might recall, I was attempting to journal my life earlier in the Spring of 2023 – wherein, I was enjoying the rhythm of writing #TheSundayPost as it was acting as a cathertic release for me. However, during the search for a new flat to rent I lost track of the hours – it came down to the very wire, too. We nearly didn’t find a flat in time and we were just blessed it all worked out in the end. It was one of those long weekends (of a move) where you were quite literally up for 24 hours straight relocating and settling into a new flat whilst maintaining your night job the ENTIRE week leading up to the ‘move day’. And, then, on the day of the move itself and the next day thereafter, you didn’t skip a shift and still somehow balanced all the chaotic balls as they threw themselves at you all at once.

Mum and I were so exhausted, we didn’t unpack a single box for two months, save our clothes and linens. We also ate out considerably, as to be frank, that relocation took the wind out of our sails. The main blessing though – as living in a neighbourhood for eight years, you get into a comfortable place with your neighbours, even if they sometimes would come and go with the tides. Relocating meant we’d be in a different neighbourhood and a different part of the city. So, all in all – that was a bit stressing, too. Until we met our new neighbours – mind you, only the ones closest to us – the rest of them seem to keep pretty much to themselves. On both sides, they look after us and we look after them, whilst being neighbourly and kind as well. It was a good fit on that side of it and we were thankful as it made the transition a bit easier on us.

Somewhere between May and June, I sorted out there was a new job opportunity which might be good for me to chase after and in a lot of respects, I am glad I took that leap of faith. I was hired at the end of May, but it wasn’t official until the first week of June. Training occupied the next 5x weeks of a gruelling commute whilst managing to arrive on time at my night job all the same! Some days, between the stress of the on-the-job training out of towne and the traffic on the commute, I am not sure how I kept my sanity. It was beyond hard but I muddled through and even found some joy along the way. I also started to gain confidence in what I was being trained to do and realised that if I could I’d like to give back eventually and help train others*. (*this will be discussed lateron in this post)

The hours and months morphed into each other as well. At one point, I was working 3x jobs round the clock so to speak and I still am in a way, as some of my hours were cut recently. I’m hoping they might bounce back into my schedule but for now, I’ve taken the high road. I’m trying not to stress out about how what I hoped the new job would provide isn’t quite what I hoped and looking at it as a positive experience despite the hurdles its giving me with a reduced work schedule. Aside from that angle of it – we’ve also lost a lot of the new employees who trained either alongside me or at different locations. I am not entirely sure why they’ve left, as they had different reasons but considering we’ve all been a team for a scant few momths now, it seems hard to believe there have been so many changes at my work place already. More of my co-workers are contemplating exiting in the next few weeks as well. I know its due to the cut in hours as this isn’t the best time for anyone to have reduced schedules and inconsistancies in their work lives. I can’t blame them at all and some of them, as I’ve gotten to know quite well in recent months and of whom will be missed.

I did decide to take a step in advancement – a small one, where I could give back a bit of the joy I had in being trained. I’m now a trainer myself and I have already taken on the challenges of training new staff. I enjoy being able to pass forward the knowledge that I have about the job but also, help others through the anxieties of what the job entails, as well, as it is long hours and sometimes very physically demanding work. I’ve trained just under 10x co-workers now and it makes my heart happy knowing that I’m helping them settle into the work with the knowledge I was given myself.

Whilst all that was going on:

If I thought losing the ability to celebrate my 10th Blogoversary was going to be taxing,

I wasn’t quite prepared to be so physically exhausted to even acknowledge my 10th Blog’s Birthday!

This year, by far, has been an especially trying year all round.

I realise my 10th Twitterversary is coming up in November, but to be fair, that one seems like one I’ll bypass or turn into a memo about losing what I loved about tweeting and am grateful for the memories I had. I wasn’t able to log onto my blog or my Twitter feeds this Summer with any kind of regularity – hence the strong reduction in posts and the clear absence of my voice online in any capacity. I’ve decided the fact I made it to my 10th Year is worth celebrating, which is why on my new profile on BlueSky (yes, I’m on there!) (look for @joriestory) I’ve mentioned just that – I am celebrating jorielovesastory.com!

I, knew, too — more changes were in the air for me as a socially bookish girl. Which meant endeaviouring to tackle new socially bookish frontiers and joining a few social communities that I might have hestitated to engage with previously. More disclosures coming in this post!

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