Brought to You by an Insane Amount of Coffee

Seriously, at this point the coffee and I have become one entity entirely. You might have noticed my complete lack of blog posts as of late. That’s because my life has decided to become a splash page of multiple jobs, school, and gods knows what else. At this point the closest thing I have to a social life is my Netflix account.

Since September 23 (my last post) I have been officially promoted to Lead Writer/Editor, have taken on a second job as a Fitness Instructor, completed my second to last Master’s course, and finished the first draft to Return to Summer’s Hollow. I get winded just from typing that. Here I thought once I was married, settled into my house, and got a hold on work things would slow down. Yeah, they sped up to light speed rates. But hey, that’s how I roll. Sleep, pshhh, who needs it?

In reality though I’m so happy with the direction that things have been going. My promotion has come with new responsibilities and the ability to actually write some official DoD articles/papers. This of course though means more meetings, more interaction with the big wigs, and more time spent actually doing work at work (imagine that).

In addition to my full-time job, I was asked to teach the fitness class that I have been taking for the past year. It’s called SkyCore and it’s a strength training/core class done on trampolines. That then takes up my Tuesday nights and Sunday mornings. It is insanely awesome and I love teaching it. I’ve have a new obsession with researching work outs and posing the question: “Can this be done on a trampoline?”

Then there’s my Master’s Program that I have a love/hate relationship with. I really do love Geospatial Science; I love creating these interactive maps/databases/websites. On the flipside though, it is SO TIME CONSUMING. On average I spend about 4 hours on each homework assignment. Final projects I spend anywhere from 15 hours to 35 hours all together. The end is in sight though. My final class starts this Wednesday and then after that I have a semester to work solely on my Capstone Project. The home stretch has started and then I will be done with school (until I decide to get another degree).

Lastly (drum roll please) I FINISHED the first draft to Return to Summer’s Hollow. For a while I was stuck with the purpose of this story but I punched write through that writer’s block and finished the last half of the book within the spans of two weeks. Knowing that it is finished is SUCH a load off of me. Also the story turned out amazing and opened up this world for one last novel to tie it all together. I also finished working on the cover design. To the right you’ll see the low res version of the cover. I opted for green tones rather than the red tones from the first book.

Needless to say my absence from the blogging world is well justified. It is my hope that I will be able to go back to my once a week posts on various anthropology, technology, and writing posts. Frankly, not having this outlet to get my thoughts out has had me a little backed up lately. I’ve been waiting to burst with all this great news for a while now, but it was never quite the time. Today, the start of a new month, seemed like the perfect day to put all of this out there. Now excuse me while I go drink my 18^th cup of coffee for the day.