If all went as planned, then, yesterday, I had my surgery. However, as one of my everyday methods of managing anxiety is planning ahead, I am writing this post several days before my expected surgery.
When I first began to suspect that I was in for the long haul with COVID, I had a brief period where I had no immediate obligations. I had intended to use those last few months of 2023 continuing to get my business organized and ready for pursuing full-time consulting and to finish a draft of my first full-length, non-fiction book. Instead, I dropped all those plans to rest, hydrate, and prepare my first blog for an extended period of inactivity.
I knew I would have limited energy and capacity for an unknown amount of time. Depending on how long that would last, I knew I would lose momentum in multiple areas such as building my client base, marketing through conference presentations, and more. It hurt to foresee the loss of momentum just as I started to reap the rewards in all these areas I had worked so hard for years to build up. I knew I would have to let this go as my body took whatever time it needed to recover from Long COVID. However, I refused to accept losing momentum on my urbantraipsing blog.
Urbantraipsing turned 12 this summer. By it’s 10th year, I had successful doubled my readership and I am in the middle of doubling it again, but at a faster rate. I needed to keep that momentum going, regardless of how long Long COVID impacted me. Fortunately, I always traipsed faster than I blogged and so I had (and still have) plenty of material on hand. Not knowing how long I would have Long COVID, I spent the last few weeks of 2023 writing and scheduling out posts into 2025. As a result, my readership continues to grow.
This approach to urbantraipsing removed the pressure from wanting to keep up with my blog while I was likely to not have the energy for it on top of my paid obligations. It also freed me to add bonus content when I’ve had the energy and inspiration throughout the year.
This Long COVID journal is as close as I’m comfortable with “immediate” content, but I still typically write the posts 3-10 days ahead of when they publish. As such, I am posting this week, even though I imagine that as you are reading this I am in a pain/drug/Long-COVID/post-surgery haze.
I expect that there will be a gap in my Tuesday/Thursday posting schedule on this blog as I expect a long and slow recovery after my surgery. However, since urbantraipsing is scheduled out for the next 12 months, my usual posts on the 1st and 15th of every month will continue without pause and there is some bonus content off schedule coming out this month. I have much more to say about Long COVID and I’m sure the surgery will add to that material, so whatever gap there is here will be minimal.
Feature image credit: Planning by ramacae from Noun Project (CC BY 3.0)
Carolyn Ristau 