[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!
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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!
In the background of all of this unrest we’ve been going through, Mum and I still struggle to sort out the best care plan for my Dad. In the beginning, the new facility he was transferred too was doing a smashing job of caring for him and ensuring his needs were being met. Yet, in recent months, those care plans seem to have faltered or disappeared. He’s not getting the assistance he needs at meal times as much as we’ve insisted he have them. And, for whichever reason, they don’t seem to realise he has temperature issues and needs to wear more not less when it comes to shirts, sweaters and long pants. It is truly frustrating. He has some new issues as well which have cropped up since he moved to this facility and we’re still searching for a new cardiologist as well. That side of my life is a bit harder to talk about nowadays as it seems harder to resolve. The only solace we had is that he had a stable living environment whilst ours was transitional at best for most of March and April.
It wears on us – heart and soul, as there doesn’t seem to be an easier route of assistance in this aspect of long-term care. It feels like another mountain to climb and in that foresight of understanding, I know we’ll conquer it as we have everything else that has come onto our path, but just once, I wish the road was less adverse. I also wish dearly that long-term care patients had more care in respect to individual needs. I am sure anyone whose had someone in a nursing home (or care home as they refer to them overseas) will understand what I am referencing here.
UPDATE: Since I wrote this last paragraph, we were able to find a facility closer to where we live which makes visiting more frequently doable for us as well as the fact that this one seems to be more agreeable for my Dad. They even have places we can take him and spend time as a family. The other place never provided ‘other spaces’ for family to go and visit. We were always stuck in one room or his room and it just didn’t allow for quality time or visits because you were always stuck around others or the nurses all the time. This new place has a calmer setting as well because of the environment outside being a lovely green space where birds like to frequent as well. We’re looking forward to being able to go from visiting inside and outdoors whilst finding new ways to connect with Dad.
As you can tell (and/or read between the lines), there has been a lot of LIFE evolving through [2023] and I fully admit, I haven’t found the best of balances between blogging, reading and working. I work more hours now than I used too and despite the fact I enjoy what I am doing it doesn’t lend itself to having a lot of downtime personally. I also recognise if I don’t sort this out in the next few months, I might burn out and that isn’t something I want to see happen either. That is why in some respects, I decided to make a few changes — in regards to which social outlets I joined recently and which ones I want to start participating in that I might have only flirted with joining previously. I’ll go into that in a moment, but I simply wanted to say, for those who might have wondered where I was or why I was so silent online – sometimes, we all just have to step back and wait for life to reach a point of stability. I had so many things going on all at once and until certain things resolved, just to read a book felt like an impossible feat.
On that note, I’ve also been having issues with my computer which has been a bit of an ongoing situation so I’m not sure if I need to fix whatever is techincally wrong with it or if I might need to consider getting a new one at some point. I lost the internet for about two weeks recently which felt like a setback of its own. And, my eyes are bugging me whilst I’m reading which I know will require a visit to an eye doctor as I most likely need to explore getting Progressive glasses to reflect the stage I’ve reached in life as most people before fifty start to find the same issues I am myself. I’ve been reading at a much slower pace since last year – nearly around the start of Autumn which was September last year and this year, Autumn is drifting closer to October or November. I’m hopeful by November I’ll have some news on that front with seeing a positive change in how my eyes can re-adjust to reading.
UPDATE: This is a continuing thread on this post, as certain issues I’ve been disclosing have been getting resolved before I’ve been able to share the post itself. I decided I couldn’t wait for the future in respects to my computer. I researched my options and to be frank, although resetting my old computer (ie. its over 8 years old!) seemed viable, I just didn’t want to chance it as the only resource I’d have to rely on to blog and/or do anything I wanted or needed to do online in the more immediate future. Thankfully, I lucked out with the deal of my lifetime – a close-out special reduced clearance computer (HP too!) turns out to be less than $400 once I make my final payment on it! The screen is lovely and wide – easy on my eyes and I can do everything so quickly it makes updating my blog or social channels so much easier! In fact, before this post was fully edited to go live on Sunday, I created, edited and posted 3x posts on #bookstagram! Imagine!??
In regards to my blog and readerly life:
As you might have wondered – when is Jorie going to start sharing her readily life again? Wells. For a very long time this year – say from February to August, I wasn’t quite sure of that answer myself! I did pop on in July sharing a review which I will be showcasing in Wednesdays #WWWednesday post as it truly uplifted my heart and my soul. It gave me something back I thought I had lost as a reader and as a blogger (especially in the ways in which I was able to convey my thoughts as I read the story) – and for that, I am forever grateful. There are moments in our lives which disrupt our blogging lives and I’ve gone through enough ruts as a reader to know that the blessed balance of keeping literature in my life isn’t always easy to maintain.
I hadn’t planned the sabbatical which became *2023* on Jorie Loves A Story and I have been fighting to find a way to end it as well. Yet, with my work life nearly taking over my hours and the exhaustion of maintaining 3x jobs for five months has been taxing in its own right. I’d like to say I can downgrade to 2x jobs but until my hours reset and resume at my new day job, I am not sure when that will happen. I did enjoy one fortnight of what that could look like – as I waited over 5 weeks to see the results of my training only to have my hours cut after my first real paycheck arrived. Sometimes in life, you just cannot predict all the challenges your going to face or all the hurdles you have to go through to get to the place your attempting to find yourself.
On that note, for anyone still reading this blog, I THANK YOU. I truly do. I haven’t even been able to visit other book bloggers or even read the feeds on Twitter or even, properly finish the drafts I created during #WyrdAndWonder which was a recapture of what I did on #bookstagram this year. I still hope I can finish those posts as much as I would LOVE to clean up my review archives and finally have an honest update on that page to reflect all the reviews I’ve written over a 10 year expanse of time. I was even thinking of creating a new archive page for Reviews for the next 10 years as a way of transitioning forward. I think part of being a book blogger is not only finding new ways to explore how to share our bookish lives but to continue to evolve how we organise our bookish lives.
I also fell behind on cross-posting my reviews to LibraryThing and I decided I need to create a list of sorts for that goal I have to accomplish in a spreadsheet offline. That way, as I read and review all future stories, I will know which ones I’ve cross-posted and which ones still need to be shared. I also thought it would help me know which ones I’ve shared socially, too. As I’m not too keen on staying on my current social channel of interest — I’d rather re-evolve my presence into BlueSky and but also, perhaps, finally getting more social on Litsy which I never really explored since I started my presence there as well as get more involved and chatty on the Discord channels I joined. Speaking of which – if you’re on Litsy, BlueSky OR Discord, let me know how to find you and/or follow you.
Ideally, I was going to join #bookstagram after a long hard think about why I originally left vs the benefits of joining it again – only to realise, it is harder to create an account there moreso than I thought! If I ever sort out how to create an account, perhaps that is another avenue to social connection I can attempt to be present on as well.
UPDATE: Since I wrote this paragraph about the woes of trying to join Insta, guess whose on Insta now? Yes, that’s right. I am. I decided to sort out a new way of socially engaging with everyone I’ve come to appreciate interacting with over the last 10 years. Either on our blogs or through Twitter and since the latter has evolved into something I don’t quite understand anymore, I decided to take a few leaps of faith and join both BlueSky and Instagram. Discord was a natural progression for me as I heard a lot of good things about it from other book bloggers and bookish friends of mine for years, plus its a fast way to connect to the communities I’m part of and/or co-host with in respect to Wyrd And Wonder and Spooktastic Reads and Sci-Fi Month. Listy is still the odd duck out as I just haven’t caught on how to participatate on that platform yet but I’ll sort it out eventually, I’m sure.
The BIG announcement really is that you can NOW FOLLOW ME on #bookstagram via:
Jorie Story | @joriestory3
I will start adding content to my feeds throughout October, as I had fully planned to participate in #SpooktasticReads this year and I knew it would be a good time to start generating my own content. I will also being using it to announce new content on Jorie Loves A Story rather than first posting via Twitter as I had done in the past. In a way, I joined Insta as a way to replace how I used to first announce new posts as socially #bookstagram has the same kind of vibe Twitter used to have itself in that regard. I know I initially wasn’t going to join Instagram but as the social worlds have evolved and changed, so has my mindset about them.
You will notice I have already jump started my presence by the time this post goes LIVE as I was delayed a fortnight from sharing this post as I had to wait to get a new computer in order to finish editing it. I cannot even share how relieved I am to be in a position to write, edit and post within a few hours rather than days/weeks as my last computer was simply on it’s last legs and trying to attempt to blog whilst it was clogged and bogged down with technical errors was not exactly an environment of joy for me as a blogger. It became such a nightmare I just let all the posts become stagnant in queue because I couldn’t spare enough time to edit them properly between my jobs and life offline. Now, that my connectivity has been resolved on all fronts – it allows me the grace to write and blog and publish content in a timeline that works with me rather than against me.
Plus, I couldn’t help but notice a lot of the people I personally interact with online are on Insta and that made me feel like it was a place I needed to be as well. Also, through my posts with @WyrdAndWonder on Insta the last few years, I’ve noticed that I enjoy making content to share on Insta and felt it might be a good fit for me all round. I am hoping to find new connections to people I might not have had the chance to interact with as much previously as well hopefully connect with new people as well. I am also hoping to reconnect to those I’ve lost touch with over the last years since my Dad’s health took a few left turns.
It is going to be a wicked good October, I think! I have #SpooktasticReads to look forward too as well as #Fraterfest via caffeinatedbookreviewer.com. I decided to join the latter event to showcase all the lovely Cosies and/or novels of Suspense I’ll be reading or listening, too. Whilst keeping the Witchy and Fantasy reads for #SpooktasticReads as it is a time for me to read or listen to some darker or more intense stories than I might pick up to read or listen too during our main event #WyrdAndWonder.
I am simply grateful to post a long overdue update and to announce my return to blogging. I look forward to sharing what I am reading on Wednesday as well as pin down the stories I want to focus on during both #SpooktasticReads and #Fraterfest this year. Until then, my gratitude is yours for your patience in awaiting my return.
Although this is more of a life update than a readerly one,
Kindly read through my archives for #TheSundayPost
REMEMBER: IF you’ve read a story you feel I might enjoy myself as I love reading Historical Fiction, Science Fiction, Fantasy, relationship-based romances, and Mysteries — kindly leave me a comment with a link to your post/review on your blog and I’ll be glad to visit you in return.
{Sources: Blog graphics created in Canva: #TheSundayPost banner, Jorie Gets Social graphic and the Comment Box banner.}
Copyright © Jorie Loves A Story, 2023.
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No wonder you needed to basically take a sabatical, Jorie! You gave me some idea of what you had been going through when you visited my blog recently, but reading the whole saga is sobering. In your shoes, I would have been totally overwhelmed. I’m so sorry you’ve been dealing with so many challenges simultaneously, but you should be proud of how well you have handled everything. I hope that things go more smoothly for you and for your mum and dad as 2023 winds down, that your job situation works out, and that you get your eyes sorted so you can enjoy reading again.
I’ve got a book recommendation for you, if you haven’t read it yet. It’s a lovely, comforting, cozy-fantasy read: The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna. And if you have read it, here are a couple more: A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers (the audiobook is excellent), and Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree. I read each of them when I needed something comforting and spirit-lifting, and they each were just what I needed at the time. I hope one or more of them can be that book for you.
Hallo, Hallo Lark,
I am so very happy to tell you, I’ve found 2x of the stories you’ve listed via audiobook @ my regional library’s audiobook catalogue! I’ve borrowed: The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches and A Psalm for the Wild-Built. I love #WitchyFiction so that particular title wasn’t a hard sell for me! I decided to just dive into it – like I am now as I listen to Make Mine Magic which is avail for the Plus Catalogue subscribers on Audible? I am loving having it back as you get those extra titles each month to explore and maybe find new authors/series? I look forward to responding back to you and giving you my feedback on the two books whilst I am sure I’ll be blogging about them, too, in the next week or so!
Bless you for reading through my posts – I truly appreciated it, as each of them gives more information on the fuller back-story of what I’ve been going through – it was the best way to better understand the scope of it all. I sometimes wonder how I managed to muddle through it all myself. And, I agree – I’m hoping I can put in the order for my glasses sooner than later as I think that will open the door for me to see better and to see more than I can now with better ease. I am just grateful for the strength I found and the fact that Mum and I can lean on each other and get through it all as it arrives on our path. That combined with our faith, it has helped us get through the harder hours and days. Sometimes though – it does just add up and it about puts you under as its a LOT but thankfully, we’ve pulled through it all. Mum is a step closer to starting her crochet project (she found the hooks last night) and I’m hoping to get something on the needles for knitting before the end of the first week of November. Little steps.
Thank you for your lovely blessing of the end of 2023. I am definitely keeping positive that your words become truth and that we can end the year kinder than how 2022 ended.
Many kind regards back to you!
Wow, Jorie, you have had so much to deal with. I’m really sorry things have been so challenging. As ever, I truly admire your stoicism and hope things get easier. The combination of keeping up your night job and the long commute for the new job’s training sounds very hard to cope with. I hope the schedule for the new job comes right eventually and gives you the hours you want. And congratulations on becoming a trainer – that sounds great! It’s such good news about the new nursing home you found for your dad too – it sounds a lot better. And lovely about your new immediate neighbours – nice ones make such a difference. Great to see you on Instagram! I’ve been on for a while but didn’t use it much at first. With Twitter’s problems, I’m now trying to use it more. I’m not on BlueSky yet – I must have a look and see if I can work out how to join. Take care. Sending hugs.
Ooh Jorie is here! When I saw your title in the link up I was like cool! Hope you are great! You’ve had a lot going on, sounds like, glad the relocation went good. I’m thinking of joining Blue Sky too- I have a code another blogger was gracious enough to send me, just haven’t done it yet.
I will continue to send prayers and well wish vibes your way and for your dad. That has to be so tough. My dad went through a similar situation so my heart breaks a little to hear what you’re going through. Be strong and I’m glad to hear about the new facility!
Sounds like 2023 has been a crazy year for you. Glad you are feeling like you have a few minutes to get back to blogging! I get it. My mom and stepdad both ended up in the hospital back in April for what seemed like a very scary month. We had to start thinking of what to do as things change with older parents. Even had my stepdad in a assisted living place for a bit after he got out of the hospital until my mom would be ready to help him back home after her own stint in the hospital. We were not happy with the place at all. It promised we could go have dinner with him, and the one night we tried, no one ever did anything but bring out his meal and never came to get a meal for us. Needless to say it got him down, so we got him home as soon as we could. Here’s hoping the rest of 2023 gets better for you!