Life Update.

Hello, Blog Friends. It's Lucy Rose. Just wanted to drop in and say, "Hey." I've been very MIA from Instagram and this blog for a while. It got to be too much for me and I had to cut it off for a while to live my life: work at The Burrito Place, settle into my new apartment and keep working in therapy. I go through seasons when I need to back off from online stuff and focus on my own thoughts and more in-person relationships. 

But in the past few weeks I've been feeling the blogging itch return! That irrepressible need to blast my thoughts into the Spiderverse and let anyone who wants to stumble across them. I don't really have a plan for blogging. No series of posts or ideas for anything structured on this blog. But I thought I would just sit down and start by saying "What's up?" 

I have popped in and out of this little internet space since 2008! That's a hard habit to break. Anyway. Here's what's been going on with me recently. 

-I have now been in therapy for over a year. My mental health has been the strongest it has been in about 5 years. This is super exciting, but also, as someone who has lived most of my life struggling with depression and anxiety, that in itself feels a little scary! 

-I have continued to work for The Burrito Place, but I switched locations to be closer to my house after our faithful 2004 Honda CRV broke down. I biked 5 miles to work every day for a few months until we were gifted a car by an incredibly kind family member. Hi Patrick. I did not know you read my blog. I have grown in my role at The Burrito Place and continue to work harder positions and continue training. I'm proud of this because my hope for working this type of job was to prove to myself that I can work again after my last tough bout with depression in the Spring of 2020. 

-I discontinued The Zine Club. The Zine Club was my pet project for several years in which I published and distributed over 15 zines (self-published booklets) to a base of subscribers. The goal was to complete 24 in total, but I chose to stop, because I needed to focus on therapy and getting well. It was a hard decision to make and I definitely wrestled with shame over quitting. But I am proud of myself for the zines I made and the community of people who helped me make it happen for as long as it lasted.

-Sheldon and I moved. We had been wanting to get closer to the city for a long time. We wanted that proximity in order to keep cultivating Sheldon's career as a painter and my career as a storyteller/comic-artist-type-person. Getting closer to the art scene in Chicago has been a dream of ours for a while and we are excited that our new apartment is on the CTA line and gets us to the heart of the city within a simple train ride. 

-We are doing well. Sheldon and I have been through a tough couple years. We have wrestled with a lot of challenges over the five years of our marriage. We spent a year in Texas helping out a relative with mental health problems. We have contended with my own bouts of mental illness. We have both been wrestling with our ideological identities. We have buried three grandparents. We have both undergone several career changes. We have moved many times. It's been a lot. But in the past year or so we have felt good--stable, even! We are leaving our twenties pretty soon and we are hopeful that our thirties are going to be easier. We are settling into our jobs and our new-ish apartment in our new city. 

I don't know if I will stop back here anytime soon to blog again. I am giving myself permission to blog or not to blog. But in case I do stop in I wanted to catch you up on things. 

I hope you and yours are doing well. I hope you are healthy and safe! 

Love,

L🌹