…blogalong? what blogalong…

For the past two months, with the failure of my daily blogging challenge fresh in my mind, I have been slowly turning over blog posts in my mind, trying to get the words into some kind of order. I had plenty of ideas for posts, but standing in my way was the calendar full of Christmassy blog posts, and with them, the self-imposed guilt of failing at my project, and also the reminder of why I failed, which came with it’s own set of emotions.

The day of my last post, when I abruptly disappered from the Advent blogalong, and attendant craftapalooza, I had so dearly been looking forward to, things turned a bit crazy after I hit “publish”. That night, a dry storm passed through our district, and started two fires, one either side of our property, including one in the state forest that we back on to. By the Thursday morning, the state forest was still not controlled, and as the afternoon progressed and photos rolled in, our anxiety levels sky rocketed. Friday dawned, and with it the news the fire had reached our back boundary but had scooted past. We breathed out, thrilled to have escaped unscathed bar a sleepless night and unproductive day or two. The weekend then, was all about hanging out at the farm, watching the water bombers overhead as they continued working to contain the fire, and generally being thankful that we were safe.

Or so we thought. Monday brought a fresh plume of smoke in a new gully. Once again we went out early to the farm to check things out – and promptly turned around and raced home, once we spotted the smoke and the five fire trucks cruising up and down our road. By the afternoon, we knew we had lost at least 70 acres of our beloved bushland, and waited with baited breath to know if our cabin, gardens and outbuildings survived. Thankfully, they were saved, through the tireless work of the NSW RFS and the SA CFS. We were much luckier than others, with the gratitude a balm to our sadness.

Within a day or two, the week of very little sleep, and minimal food intake from the anxiety, combined with the adrenaline crash, completely wiped me out and sent me to bed for two days. From there, we launched into Christmas prep, houseguests and general life, now with an added dose of fencing and road clearing required. No time for crafting beyond the bare minimum required to at least pretend to justify the metres of Christmas fabric I had insisted on purchasing. Blogging was completely out of the question, both from a time perspective and that of headspace. After Christmas, thankfully, we were able to escape the lingering smoke and almost daily dust storms to wrap up an exhausting couple of weeks with a quick trip to the beach, and man, Vitamin Sea was just what we needed! So refreshing and revitalising to have a change of scenery, blue skies, fresh air, and a whole mountain range between us and the list of jobs at home that was growing by the day.

Two months on, all the fires across NSW, of which ours was just one of almost 200, and one of the smaller and insignificant ones, are finally contained, in part thanks to some amazing rain – in the two months since I last wrote, we have gone from drought, to fire, to bucketing rain and flash flooding in our gullies and overflowing dams… a land of drought and flodding rains indeed. With a new year comes a new routine and a return to normal life, and with it, creative mojo. We are back into school and I am bubbling with an abundance of creative energy, and an excitement to be back in this space to share with you. Hello 2020, let’s RISE to the opportunities coming our way.