Yesterday was my birthday, I turned 33. I spent most of the week(s) leading up to it feeling pretty awful due to somehow contracting pneumonia. That was a scary experience, I went from what felt like a light cold on Monday to being unable to breathe properly by Wednesday evening. I went to the doctor on Thursday morning and with some antibiotics and one of those inhalers I made it through the next few days while slowly recovering. All things considered it could have been a lot worse, but I was not a big fan of being unable to breathe.
One issue I always run into when I’m sick is that the main advice people give you is to stay in bed to rest up. Of course, this is sound advice and should be followed in most cases, but whenever I go to lie down when I’m sick, I instantly feel much worse, and this also doesn’t improve if I just tough it out. So my best option is to just huddle up on my desk chair and tough it out that way because sleeping is impossible and laying down feels like hell. Luckily I have been recovering for a few days now and although I still feel weak and iffy at best, I am hoping to return to work by Friday, knowing the first day will be one where I can take it slow.
So that explains my absence from this blog for the last few weeks, now let’s turn to the future. With The Hesitant Hero volume 4 done, I am going to take it a lot slower for the next three months. That’s been the case each year for the past few years, but this time I’m not going to pretend that I have big plans. My current aim for the next few months is to deliver one weekly blogpost every Friday and leave it at that. That gives me some room to figure out what I want to do next, how I want to accomplish it and it might also help me get out of this slump. I have fully accepted that 2025 is not going to be a very productive year when it comes to writing. I have too many other things going on – some practical like finishing uni – some of which I do not wish to share here. My main focus has always been to get the word count up and I still stand by that method, but right now it’s counterintuitive so I’m letting it go for a while. I’ll go back to being productive in the new year, when I’ve hopefully finished most of my remaining uni courses and some of the other things in my private life should have either been resolved or be less stressful by then.
So that’s it from me right now, I’ll give a much more indepth Hesitant Hero update next Friday (the 10th) and we will go from there. Thank you for your patience and as always I hope you enjoy my blog posts. Know that volume 5 of the Hesitant Hero will arrive early next year if things go as planned, and I expect that they will. Thanks for reading!
Opal Kaharis 