You know, whenever I take one of these prolonged breaks from writing there is always the fear that when it comes time to get back in the groove that I’ll have forgotten how to write entirely. Of course, this would imply that I know how to write in the first place and sometimes I think the jury is still out on that. That’s not me looking for affirmation, although I would never say no to some positive feedback because it feeds my ego which in turn keeps me brimming with undeserved self-confidence, but more of an understanding I’ve reached with the writing process. There are days where you think you’ve killed it and put out something entirely awesome from first word to last word and then there are days where you literally hate every word coming out of your brain. Ebbs and flows of writing can be cruel, especially on the ego so please make with those positive affirmations, but I love it. I love writing and while a week and half may not seem like a long break it certainly felt like one.

Which again, has brought me here wondering if I’m capable of writing. Considering I’m at the two-hundred-word mark, I think I’m more than capable but then again is this really writing or is more babbling? Are those two things different? Feel free to discuss in the comments.

So, I guess the question has to be, if I wasn’t writing then what was I doing. The answer to that is easy, I was kind of resetting. 2021 has been a long year that has really worn me down. Work has been a non-stop grind and things in life haven’t played out the way that they were expected to. Each passing week I found myself getting more and more tired to the point where piecing together enough words for a column seemed too heavy a weight to lift. My brain was losing the capacity to be coherent, so I took a vacation and turned it off. Like a light switch. My original plan for vacation was write up a storm and post a bunch of columns but when it came time to execute that plan, I found my brain wasn’t ready. It needed to heal and grow back to its original state kind of like a starfish growing back one of its arms (legs?). My brain needed to get its starfish on. So, I let it.

That’s not to say that spent a week as a vegetable staring at a wall and drooling. Now, that’s not much of a vacation and I couldn’t imagine how much drool that would entail. Even thinking about it makes me want to gag as I realize, drool is kind of gross you guys. Yuck. No, instead I just did a bunch of things with the Mrs. that allowed me to turn everything off and just exist and be happy. It has been wonderful.

Some things did require brainpower though. We finished watching all of Netflix’s Dark and let me tell you, whatever brain power I wasn’t using to write might have been used to break down and figure out that brilliant little show. I also did a bunch of reading. Caught up on some comics. Finished Stephen King’s latest novel, Billy Summers, and after I dried my eyes opened up the next book in the First Law stand-alone series. I also played a bunch of Mario Golf.

And now, as my vacation is coming to an end, I’m ready to get back into the swing of things. I’m not saying I’m going to crank out five to seven columns a week but I am saying it’s time for new content again. I Am Geek is having its best year ever. Ever. I know I said that last year too, but the numbers keep on going up and the site is experiencing more volume which means more eyeholes. I’m very excited about the direction of the site and how things have turned out this year. You guys keep showing up so the least I could do is keep putting out new content.

And what a week to get back into things. It looks like the Spider-Man: No Way Home trailer could finally be dropping this week (either tonight around 9:30 EST or maybe early tomorrow) which we’re going to need to break down. There are a million and one things I want to say about Dark so maybe I’ll string together a column on that. Last week’s What If…? was filled with bittersweet joy and there are some themes worthy of discussion. On and on and on the list goes and I’m ready to tackle all of it with you.

Thank you for your patience while I took a little break to re-group but it’s time to get back in the swing of things. Hopefully tomorrow we’ll “swing” into a Spider-Man trailer breakdown and really get back in the groove. And if the trailer doesn’t drop… well, we can bitch about trailer spoilers from internet leaks which apparently are a thing now because the internet is the coolest.

See you see Geeklings, thanks for letting me get my starfish on! Hearts and kitten whiskers.