It’s Time.

By Jamie DeBree 2025/09/12 Admin, Weekly News, Writing Notes

I’ve said it before, and can’t overstate enough just how messed up 2025 has been. Between politics and deaths and changes in work and routines and health stuff and…well…*everything*…I feel like I’ve been tossed around in a washing machine, and then tumbled through the dryer right after. It left me reeling for a bit there. Several times over.

The good news is, things are finally stabilizing. Not in the wider world, obviously, but in my small sphere of things (which is where I try to focus day-to-day). I just got over a head cold, so hopefully my health will stabilize for awhile (and maybe let me finally work out long enough to shed some excess fat), work is stabilizing for the most part (I think?), I’ve switched my routines up every which way possible and finally come up with new ones that serve me better as far as allowing for daily creative time and reading/journaling, and I am finally (finally!) back to writing regularly (with the exception of last week…because…head-cold-fuzz).

Two major things have made getting back to writing possible. The first was my husband retiring from his job this summer. He retired to take care of his mom after his dad died, just a year earlier than he’d already planned to. He is loving retirement, and happier with this turn of things, so it was a good move anyways, and his mom really needs the help.

His more flexible schedule allowed me to be comfortable asking him to feed the dogs one night a week (knowing he isn’t going to get caught up in work and have to stay late randomly), so I could join a writing group that meets at our local bookstore on Tuesday evenings.

This is not a critique group, but an actual writing group, where we meet around 6pm (which is when I get off work), and the first half hour is for chatting as everyone arrives and gets settled, and then for one hour between 6:30 – 7:30pm, there is no talking, only writing. It’s glorious. The creative energy is thick, as everyone’s either writing, or thinking about writing, and at the end of each session, I have written at least a thousand words (generally around 1500), and I’m excited and pumped up about keeping the momentum going for the rest of the week.

The thing that makes writing possible on the other days of the week is the Suvie I ordered earlier this summer. Without sounding like an infomercial, it’s a countertop appliance that has the ability to refrigerate food until it’s time to cook, then it will roast, bake, sous vide, air fry, or steam in two separate compartments and have a meal ready at a prescheduled time. The next evolution of a slow-cooker, if you will.

Cooking from scratch takes me a good 30 min to an hour (an hour if I need to prep veggies and such), but if I put a meal in the Suvie at lunch, dinner is ready by the time I get home, feed the pets, and change clothes. So instead of eating at 7:30 or 8pm, we can eat right at 7pm. This “buys” at least half an hour of my evening back.

I use that extra half hour to write – dictating as I walk on the treadmill in our basement (after I walk the dogs – I need the extra exercise). I can dictate between 1200-1700 words in a 20 minute session on the treadmill, which I then use Prosewrite to transcribe for me (and it does an excellent job of formatting and adding punctuation so I don’t have to).

These two things – joining a writing group for an hour of pure writing time each week, and being able to pre-schedule meals that require less work from me in the evenings – has made a huge difference in my ability to write. I should have a Halloween horror story draft finished within the next few days, and off to my editor. Then it’s back to the novel drafts I already have in progress, and a little fall romance story that’s been brewing in the periphery for awhile now.

Being creative feeds my soul. In a world of craziness, that’s my oasis. So finding (making!) the time to be creative again, while still protecting my time late at night for journaling and reading is something I’ve needed for a very long time.

It’s time to embrace the writer life again. Time to foster that creative side of my brain, and nurture it so in a few years, when I have the opportunity to really let it run, it’ll be in good shape to do just that.

It’s also time to get back to blogging again. I’ve been less present on social media this year, and I don’t see that changing much considering the state of things, but this and my other blogs/websites are my little corners of the internet, where I’m free to post and opine and entertain as I see fit, and I think going forward, that’s going to be my primary way of communicating online (email and rss subscriptions are available for all, if you’d like to follow along, though I will try to post on Facebook, at least, when new posts are up).

Why blogging, when it’s far trendier to just post all thoughts as they come on social media? Because I like blogging. I still read blogs daily (my feed-reader is chock full), and I know at least some other people do, and I don’t have to worry about algorithms putting my posts in weird orders or hiding certain things from subsets of people or whatever – on my sites, what you see is what I put there. I have control, which is a precious thing online these days.

Next week’s post is already written, and I have a list of topics I’ll be working through for the rest of the year.

Here’s to yet another new beginning, and another change in the seasons of life.

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Tagged on: blogging, changes, life rolls, routines, writing