The blog has been silent for more than two weeks and I can’t even blame it on the busyness of the season because we’ve kept our Christmas preparations very simple this year. No, it definitely hasn’t been that.

AI describes writer’s block as “a temporary inability to produce new work or a creative slowdown, characterized by feeling stuck, lacking ideas, or finding writing difficult, often stemming from anxiety, stress, perfectionism, or burnout, not a lack of skill.”

Feeling stuck… lacking ideas… stemming from anxiety and stress? Yes, I think that probably describes exactly what’s been happening! If you’re a regular reader of the blog, you already know that I had an ablation in mid November to destroy a cancerous tumour on my liver. After a few days of brain fog, loss of appetite, and absolute exhaustion, I started to feel better and although my energy level wasn’t quite what I was used to, I was soon back to all my normal activities.

Then, two weeks ago, I noticed signs that something wasn’t quite right. Blood tests showed that my liver enzymes were seriously elevated. I wasn’t in pain and I had no obvious signs of infection, so the cause was a mystery. That led to more blood tests, two unplanned trips to the city, a CT scan, a FibroScan (similar to an ultrasound), and two consultations with a very nice hepatologist (liver specialist). In a health care setting where it often takes months for a person to get a scan or see a specialist, I was amazed at how fast all of this happened and of course, my mind went to all kinds of worse case scenarios. Thankfully, to make a long story short, there is no sign of anything wrong with my liver and the specialist is convinced that what we’re seeing is simply effects of the tumour that was burned dying off. As a precaution, I’ll be having weekly blood tests until things return to normal.

Anytime the blog is silent for this length of time, I start to feel like I’m letting my regular readers down and I also know that some of you start to worry. Now that I’ve made myself sit down and write this, hopefully the creative juices will begin to flow again and I’ll get back into my regular routine of posting every Friday. Probably not this week though as we’ll be spending time with family and hope you will be too.

Living as far north as we do, I’m always delighted when the winter solstice arrives and we can begin looking forward to the days getting longer again. I admit to being a little jealous when our oldest son, who lives in North Vancouver, sent me photos of roses in bloom earlier this week! We had a blizzard on Wednesday, so we’re living in a very white world right now. This is what Christmas looks like to me though!

Wherever you’re celebrating this season and whether you have a white Christmas or not, I hope you’re warmed by the love of family and friends and I wish you a very Merry Christmas!