Just my luck: right after posting my declaration to return to blogging, I came down with laryngitis.  It has made my teaching endeavors this week quite interesting.  Teaching without much of a voice is no easy feat.  Luckily, I have wonderful kids who don’t use my ineptitudes this week against me.

In the hopes of making a speedy recovery, I have been spending the majority of my free time resting.  Not that writing is necessarily hugely labor intensive but my medicine makes feel a bit loopy so concentration is difficult.

I have a bunch of posts planned ahead!  Please don’t give up on me.  Yet.

It seems I come and go a lot.

My last “hiatus” has lasted more than a year.  It is the longest break from blogging I have ever taken.  And I have been itching to come back.  But the words have not been coming to me as easily as before.  Every time I sit down to begin writing, a knot of fear creeps into my stomach.

There were definitely moments on my journey back where I simply considered quitting and deleting the stupid thing.  I doubted that any of my readers would remember me or care if I ever returned.  I remembered how frustrating blogging could be when you spent so much time pouring your heart and soul into some sort of reflection and didn’t get the response you had hoped for.  I remember playing the numbers game and wishing and wanting more people to hear my voice, to care about what little insignificant me had to say.

Well, I have thrown all of that out the window with my return.  What I write in here is going to be a lot more about me and for me.  I will still always call this a bookish blog because it centers around books: the ways in which they inspire me to consider new ideas about life, love, and happiness.  However, it will also be more personal.  I want to document my trials and tribulations as a first year teacher, as an adult embarking on her first real job, and as a young woman still just trying to navigate her way through life the best she can.

This year I will be embarking on a happiness project of my own, returning to yoga, and reviewing books regularly (there will also hopefully be a nice mix of poetry and short stories added to the mix!).  However, I’m also going to be adding some new “features” to the blog.  I will be pouring some other pieces of my life into this blog: gaming insights, television spotlights, and movie reviews.  These were all things that used to bring me shame but I’ve realized they are interests and hobbies that bring me joy so I really shouldn’t ever keep them hidden.  Plus they are the things that Brian, my boyfriend, and I love to do together.  They deserve to be written about and shared with the world.

I’m not sure how many of you are still out there reading this, but hello again.  I’ve missed you all and I’m excited to be turning the page and beginning another chapter in my life.

Justice Jennifer will return.  Summer 2012.