Hi Friends,
Long time no talk! House Vegan has been more or less empty for 10 months. 10 months! That’s almost a year! It’s crazy, right? You might be wondering what could possess someone who has been blogging consistently for 5 years to just stop in the middle of the best blogging season ever.
Many people have asked me what happened, and I had reason after reason, but I’m going to get to the core of it with you. What happened was: depression, anxiety, confusion, and feelings of being adrift. Like I didn’t know who I was as a blogger, content creator, writer, or housewife anymore. I started to feel overwhelmed, disoriented, and unmotivated.
I was spending 40-60 hours a week on HV on top of my other job. To be frank, I wanted to make more money here. And among entrepreneurs, there’s the ever-present idea that it’s all about the hustle. If you aren’t seeing the success you want, it’s because you aren’t working hard enough. And I truly believed that. I believed it was my fault because I was too lazy to do the work. At 40-60 hours I believed that I wasn’t a hard worker, and I didn’t deserve the success. I was constantly beating myself up and doubting who I was on my own website. How backward is that? The truth is my blog is perfect because it is me. I was too cloudy and tired to see that.
Then my other work started to pile on. That + feeling like a failure anyway made it easy for me to do less blogging. And all the sudden, out of nowhere, I wasn’t doing it at all.
Then we lost Moira, and nothing at all mattered anyway. Not work, not the blog, not fall, not Christmas, not the changing seasons. Nothing. And even as the days went one, and nothing got better, I still didn’t notice the symptoms of depression set in.
Fast forward to January of this year: I’m exhausted all the time, my heart aches for Moira every waking moment, I have no creative outlet whatsoever and my work is demanding. I can barely make it through a regular workday without taking a giant nap. My hair started to thin, and I just knew I was deficient in something. My mother just knew something was wrong with my thyroid. My husband just knew that I would never call the doctor without constant reminders. So he reminded me every day until I made an appointment.
I get to my appointment and my doctor listened patiently as I listed all of my symptoms. She then listened as I diagnosed myself with “some sort of deficiency” and then asked to take a thyroid test.
The first thing out of her mouth was “did you have something troubling happen in your life recently?”. And it hit me, oh my god, she’s right. I immediately knew exactly where she was going with that question. I was depressed. So I opened my mouth to answer and all that came out was blubbering tears, and an attempt to relive my short life with Moira. 16 months was all we got. It’s bullshit, isn’t it? Such bullshit.
So long story short (too late!), I’ve been on anti-depressants for 7 months and it’s helped a ton. In that 7 months, I’ve been taking it relatively easy. I work, I clean, I cook. I’ve cooked a lot. I even made vegan deviled eggs:
I also workout sometimes and drink a lot of green tea lattes.
We also go to the arcade a lot. Like a lot a lot.
This is Mittens.
And this is Jagger.
But I’ve missed this space, y’all, and the other blogs I follow. I’ve missed sharing what I love. So here I am! I have recipes, roundups, and DIYs all scheduled, and ready to share. There’s a lot too because we have 10 months to catch up on, friends. And it’s no coincidence that I chose August to come back. Fall!!!
And in all honesty, I needed the break. I needed to grow up a little bit and take some time to remember why I started blogging – to share with the world the things that I do in our home that make me happy.
So here I am, saying hello and I’ve missed you. Come back later this week for a brand new recipe!
Love,
HV