Happy New Year!

Goodbye, 2024... Hello, new publication title ✨

Jan 13, 2025

I can’t believe we’re officially in 2025. I hope everyone had a safe and relaxing holiday season. I’m thankful to have had a lot of unused vacation days that were going to expire so I had a loooooong break.

Little update:

Name changes all around

If you haven’t already noticed, the title of my main publication has changed. Bees, Books, and Lemons has been with me for a while now, but it felt like it was time for a change. I just no longer connected with it. It actually started out as Bees and Lemons on Instagram and was a place for me to share my journey through graduate school for a degree that I never got. After changing it to a bookish focus, I tried really hard to stay engaged with the page. The connection to it quickly faded, however.

The new year is the perfect chance to start over. So, with that, let me introduce:

The Mossy Bookshelf

I’m excited for this new adventure and the renewed creativity I’m having. Nothing else will really change about this publication. It’ll still be the place where I share my book reviews and bookish updates. This post will be the only “out of place” one.The Chronically Ill Reader’s Digest will stay has my secondary publication where life updates and whatnot will end up. I’m hoping to post more often everywhere because this is actually fun for me and I enjoy it. I just couldn’t connect to anything I was doing.

That being said, my handles have changed on all of my social media as well. You can find me on:

Instagram: bookish_bogwitch

Goodreads: goodreads.com/bookish_bogwitch

Storygraph: bookish_bogwitch

Reflecting on 2024

Something I do each year is try to capture a moment each day to fill out my 1 Second Everyday journal for that year. If you don’t know about the app, 1SE prompts you to take a video each day and pick one second from it to record in your journal. It can literally be of anything. You can also choose a picture for the day if you didn’t have a chance to record a video. I think it’s a really fun way to journal during the year. I didn’t do a good job for 2024, but I did get a few moments. Here is my 2024 1SE mashup:

I’m not sad to see 2024 go. It wasn’t a great year for me overall. I started off the year sick and just continued to fluctuate in and out of being sick. I experienced a lot of pain, in all forms. I constantly questioned a lot of the decisions I made me, not knowing whether or not they were the right things to do. I did learn a few things, however.

1. Turning 30 kind of sucks.

There are a lot of milestones society expects you to have hit by the time you turn 30, especially if you’re a woman. You’re supposed to well-established in your career. Own a house. Be married. Have children. Earn enough money to live comfortably.

My 30th birthday was on December 12th, and I’ve only reached two of those milestones.

I’m incredibly thankful to have the job that I have and that I was given the opportunity to work there almost 9 years ago. I made my way up from intern to assistant director of my department and that’s not something I take for granted. I’ve worked my ass off and I’m grateful for everything that I went through to get here, both the good and the bad. The lessons I’ve learned along the way are things I carry with me each day.
I’ve been married for 5 years now (been together with Brandon for 9 years coming this March) and I’m so happy to have him as my partner in this life. He is my best friend and I am 1000% a husband’s girl. While we may not have kids, we’re dog parents to the cutest 6 year old Pomeranian on the planet. I couldn’t be happier with my small little family.

What I hate the most about turning 30 is the pressure I feel from everywhere to hurry up. I don’t know if any of you have experienced this, but it feels so heavy and overwhelming. I don’t know how else to explain it… Maybe it’s just a me thing.

2. Getting diagnosed with fibromyalgia has been life changing.

The thing about chronic illnesses is that they take up so much of your time, and I don’t think relatively healthy people don’t understand that. They assume that you’ll get better and wish that for you, but with a chronic illness, that’s not something that happens. It’s chronic, meaning it’s forever. There is no getting better. You stay in this constant state of sickness and it’s awful.

I was diagnosed with endometriosis in 2020, so I already knew what being chronically ill was like. My case of endometriosis is much milder than others, but it still affects me tremendously. Fibromyalgia, however, is another beast entirely. The pain that endometriosis makes me feel is a cake walk compared to fibromyalgia pain. Endometriosis pain is localized and just feels like severe cramping. Fibromyalgia feels like someone has ran me over with a bus several times and then expects me to function like normal.

I’ve spent the last several months living in constant pain. Sometimes it’s bearable, and sometimes I can’t even move and it makes me cry. I’m learning that certain foods cause my pain to increase. I’ve learned that my fibromyalgia is not only stressed based, but is also triggered by atmospheric changes. I already hated thunderstorms. Now I hate them more.

Fibromyalgia and endometriosis are both invisible illnesses. You can’t look at me and tell that I’m sick. It’s really hard to explain to people that I can’t do certain things because it’ll make me flare up. I feel like I’m still grieving the life I thought I’d have before my fibro diagnosis, and I’m not sure when that process will be over. Maybe it never will.

Things for 2025

I have decided that my word of the year for 2025 is capable. Why? I need to keep reminding myself that I still am capable of many things even when my body tries to tell me differently. There are things that I can’t do anymore and things that I need help with more often, and that’s ok. I accept that. What I don’t accept is feeling like I’m useless, because I’m not. I’m still very capable. I just have to do things a bit differently these days.

As for my goals of the year, I’d like to:

1. Take more photos and videos, and make sure I’m included in photos and videos

I’m really bad about taking pictures. I’m also really bad about being in pictures and videos. This year, I want to change that. I’m going to desperately try to do my 1 Second Everyday video journal for the entire year. Will I miss some days? Absolutely, but I want to fill out the majority of the year. I also want to take more pictures. I have ADHD, so there’s so much I forget about. I really want to make sure I capture more memories for me to look back on so that I don’t feel like I’m missing huge parts of my life.

2. Read more books

I have a reading goal of 20 books this year. I’m going to try to achieve that goal, but it’s ok if I don’t. Reading isn’t a competition.

3. Actually write in my journal…

I make a journal for every year. It’s like a bullet journal/junk journal and I use it like a diary. I did a terrible job at writing in it last year. Like, I wrote for almost the entire month of January and then didn’t pick it up again until August. Yeah, shame on me. Journaling is really helpful for me because I can write about anything and everything. It’s actually recommended for people who have chronic illnesses as a way to express feelings and emotions that you can’t really share with others.

4. Hang out with more people

I’m a grade-A introvert. I am most comfortable in my own home where it’s quiet and I can be alone. However, that can be really unhealthy sometimes. I barely interact with other people besides my coworkers and my husband. So, this year I want to try to schedule more friend dates. They don’t have to be extravagant or anything. Just a day where we spent time with each other, because I’m reeaaaalllllyyyy bad about that.

5. Be more active

The best way to combat fibromyalgia is with exercise and movement, believe it or not. Even though the act of moving your body in any way is literally what hurts, being and staying active makes the pain less painful. I pretty much stopped exercising all together when my pain first appeared last year in June. I’ve lost a lot of muscle and strength since then and I really don’t like that. I both want and need to get back into exercising.

Closing out…

I have mixed feelings about 2025, but I’m trying to stay hopeful. The fact that I started writing this literally on January 2nd and it’s now the 13th just goes to show how much life and my health get in the way of things. I’m tasking myself with posting here more often and actually making the time to do so. One can only wish that I’ll be successful.

I’m curious though. What goals have you made for yourself for 2025? I don’t like to call them resolutions because that feels like they’re solutions to a problem or something you don’t like. Goals feel more achievable, at least in my eyes. Anyway, what are some goals you have for this year? Do you have a word of the year? I always wonder how many other people do that practice.

See you next time,

Jessica, aka The Bookish Bog Witch