Rediscovering My Voice: A New Blogging Journey

It’s been eight or nine years since I’ve written a blog post. I kept trying to restart my blog but the brain often gets complicated and the intentions don’t become reality.

If you’re already following me here (thank you!) you probably followed me from my old blog Johnbalaya (which no longer exists). Maybe followed me here from one of the other blogs I toyed with in my nearly twenty-years of blogging. If you’re a long-time follower, thank you for still being here.

If you’ve randomly stumbled here, to my new blog: welcome.

Over the years, my posts wandered through music, poetry, short fiction, a bit of dark/horror fiction, and my own mental health journey.

The heart of my blog writing became the story of my mom—our complicated relationship, the realities of caregiving, and her slow decline into dementia. My last post was her obituary. (There was also a short post with a link to this blog.) I thought I’d keep going after that, but I didn’t. A few drafts here and there, nothing published. I knew my writer’s voice and my direction was no longer the same, was no longer there.

I needed time to figure out who I was without caregiving as the center of my life.

Life has changed a lot since I last posted—we’ve moved to another city, another state. I’ve had time to reflect, and it feels like I’m ready to discover my new writer’s voice. Time has given me some clarity as well as new perspectives on the past.

We’re selling Chez Xanadu, the home I lived in for most of my life. You’ll hear more about it—it’s as much a character in my story as any person I’ve known.

This blog will be a jumble: I’ll revisit some old stories, through the lens of the clarity that time brings. I’ll also write about what’s happening now: life in Albuquerque, the shift into a new chapter, and whatever else feels worth putting into words. You’ll probably see some poetry, some fictional stories, quotations, and music—generally older, the soundtrack-of-my-life type of songs).

Welcome to the new version of my old blog. Let’s see where the journey takes us.