Nobody likes long pauses

Raise your hand if you've ever been let down by yourself for not doing something you said you would. Raise the other hand if you've done this so many times that you just don't believe a single aspiration that escapes your lips anymore. I'm not going to ask you to wave your arms around like you just don't care, because you do, and I do too. Let me explain...

29.04 I finally made all the necessary arrangements and set up this site.

Then 3.5 weeks of silence, but I have since:

• Moved out of my parents house to M's in a responsible attempt to avoid potentially catching Covid from my mum, who attended a wedding a week ago and started experiencing symptoms but refused to get herself tested.
• Started a new job (as a sales assistant in the glamorous Nala Designs which is smack in the middle of the island, fulfilling my lifelong dream to work in town)
• Attended a birthday party which I later found out hosted a symptomatic Covid positive person (douchebag). What did I expect from Love Lane, really?
• Isolated throughout Eid festivities (by drinking too much wine with M and K while binging the Harry Potter films and building my first adult jigsaw, and by that I mean it has 1000 pieces, not that it was an obscene image. But wouldn't that be a winning combination though?)
• Received a negative Covid test, and immediately went over to W's
• Only to find out later that M had tested positive, which reset my timeline and invalidates my negative test result, kicking off the inadvertent two week quarantine. In this time, I lost my weekend gig at Nala (oh how shop assistance will never be the same again), and worked from home for the remaining two weeks of my other job, only to dramatically quit owing to irreconcilable differences with a coworker.
• Stuck far away from family and friends, I finally set out to make my dreams come true and began searching for work (freelance gigs) online. Which I found.

23.05 I wrote the first post 'Introductions', which felt really good.

It reminded me of that line from F.R.I.E.N.D.S. when Chandler helps Joey rehearse for an audition. Joey needs to smoke a cigarette and does a poor job at convincing anyone that he is a smoker, and Chandler says to him,

"Don't think of it as a cigarette, think of it as the thing that has been missing from your hand". That's what I feel when I finally commit to writing something, and hitting 'publish'.  

Then 3.5 more weeks of silence, during which time I have:

• Hit my Q2 goal of making my first $500. June still has 1.5 weeks left and I am certain I can hit $1000 by then based on my current earning trajectory.
• Started watching Game of Thrones, developed a taste for Formula 1, and drank half a bottle of champagne on a random Friday just because life is kind to us.    

18.06 Present day.

I'm not going to lie, progress on the front of detailing my trials and tribulations as a full-time freelance writer on this website has not been going as well as my very imaginative mind had predicted. However, I won't get into why there has been a 2x streak of prolonged pauses either, and I hope this breakdown of how Q2 has gone is some indication that while I have not been documenting my experiences on my website on a weekly basis as planned, I was not sitting around banging balls either.

Life is too short and unpredictable for us to expend energy berating ourselves for our shortcomings. A more conducive strategy moving forward is a new affirmation I tell myself: I forgive you. This is what is important to you. It doesn't matter that you didn't show up then. What matters is you're here now, and I am listening.