Hello there, my dear blog readers! Holy guacamole, it's been ages! How are you? What have you been up to? I don't know about you, but I am just beginning to emerge from an intense year and see a hint of new growth on the horizon.
I've finally had the time to take care of the many backlogged tasks needing my attention that had accumulated over the past lifetime that was apparently only actually twelve months. And as I dealt with the odds and ends that needed tending to, I could feel myself creating a calm space for creativity to bloom.
Checklists checked.
Dreams invited.
Feats accomplished.
Little seeds of ideas planted.
And it feels good.
I wanted to capture the essence of what I'm feeling in a picture, but Lafayette is covered in snow again, which doesn't exactly evoke the same level of spring growth I'm experiencing. So I decided to look back a few years for one of my own photos rather than use a stock image. And I found the perfect one. I took the photo of the butterfly above in 2017 when I was writing Sophie and Spot. I was at the Butterfly Pavilion, which you clever readers remember is where Sophie celebrated Nadine's birthday party.
At the time I took the photo, I was simply a writer conducting some research for a story that I didn't know if I would even finish. I didn't yet know it would win an award from Moonbeam Children's Book Awards or that I would share my story with people around the world.
It reminds me of who I was on that day—a writer with an idea, in the midst of trying to bring that idea to life. It reminds me of another idea I have—a sequel to Sophie and Spot. Although this time, I'm just between the daydreaming stage and the let's-start-thinking-about-writing stage where I'm ready to hit the springboard and leap and see what happens.
I'm ready to stretch my wings.