Happy New Year!! 2025

Welcome to The Burning Hearth!

Wow! How did we get here? I feel like my Write On, Door County residency this past January was just yesterday. So much has happened between then and now that I can’t believe it’s already all behind me.

The Burning Hearth featured some amazing guests this past year. Many thanks to Diane Gottlieb, Tara Campbell, Shze-Hui Tjoa, and Kylie Mirmomahadi for their generous, in-depth interviews. To David Naimon for the last two rotations of our “Circling Saturn with David Naimon” series (Winter 2024 rotation, Spring 2024 rotation), along with guest questioners Anthony Garret and Maura Finkelstein. And finally, thanks to the wonderfully talented Diane Gottlieb, Susan Leary, Susan Triemert, and Cathy Ulrich, who contributed to “Voices of the Summer Solstice,” which has been the most read (and continues to be read) post in the history of The Burning Hearth. I have fond memories of all these collaborations, and I’m delighted to know that they live in my personal archive, as well as in the archive of The Burning Hearth for all of you to discover or rediscover, which you can do by clicking on the author’s name or series’ title.

Indeed, it does seem like 2024 flew by; and yet, there are times I feel like this year has stretched wide and long like the open landscapes of New Mexico, which I stood in wonder of this past August.

As many of my friends and readers know, I began a lengthy break from my personal writing and from interviewing after my trip to New Mexico. I also left X in November; and while I’m at BlueSky, my presence there has been, up to this point, quite limited. The last months of 2024 have been transformative for me, in ways I could have never imagined. Of course, that is always the case. An imagined transformation, I can’t imagine, would have as much impact.

Wading in the Rio Grande

On a surprising note, one of the last contacts I made before leaving X was Yota Schneider, the creator of The Art of New Beginnings. She, along with her Circle of Women monthly gatherings, has been integral in my transformation. People come into our lives when we need them most, and meeting Yota and joining this gathering was the case for me.

Monthly, we meet for a night of guided meditation created by Yota. We are given time to reflect and write about our meditation before sharing whatever we desire with the group regarding our experience. The sacredness of these gatherings, which has brought about a reengagement with my deeper consciousness, has proven to be just what the proverbial doctor ordered. I highly recommend Yota and her Circle of Women gatherings, and if you find it’s something you might be interested in, you’re in luck. She is beginning a new gathering group in 2025. Check it out at her website, here.

During my break, I seriously considered, my participation in, and with, social media; my thoughts and feelings on the many changes taking place in the publishing industry; what I want and/or am expecting from my writing; and finally, how many of the podcasts, the lit mags, and the further keeping up with the myriad things all the noise in the social media vortex tells me that I should be keeping up with, do I actually want to keep up with.

Stepping away from it all allowed me to discover that I was drowning in a sense of ennui unlike any I had known before. To the point that I was emotionally and mentally paralyzed. My decision in January 2024 to write Born of Water the way I wanted to, was a breakthrough moment. At every turn afterwards, I discovered an unexpected point of self-abandonment.

As my head began to clear, I came back into myself, and I realized that I don’t have to keep up with anything I don’t want to. Trying to keep up had taken me away from many of the processes that I had known for years to work best for me. I finally admitted to myself that I had felt indirectly and passive-aggressively forced, by the real/unreal pressures of social media, to show interest in things I’m not truly interested in. I suddenly felt the impact of accumulated hours of wasted time.

And time is my focus for 2025. How much of it is available to me? Hourly, daily, monthly, etc. What are the most important things I want to do with my available time? Who and what do I want to spend time with in the real word vs. the metaverse? How many deep, sincere relationships can be fulfilled in the space of one’s life? And, on the literary side: How many podcasts do I want to devote time to? As if anyone who knows me, doesn’t already know, Between the Covers is the obvious winner here. What lit mags do I want to support? I love print and at the moment Orion is in the top spot. And lastly, what writing projects do I want to focus on this year? Stay tuned to find out, because it is my plan to share more about them here than on social media.

Looking forward to 2025, I don’t know yet what exactly my presence on BlueSky will be. I hate to think that social media has become the main resource for showing my support to my friends and fellow writers. I have never forgotten how a long-time friend and former roommate of mine, who joined Facebook back in its earliest days, told me, at the time, that if I cared about her and what was happening in her life, I would join Facebook, too. Because, after all, posting the highlights (big and small) of her life, so all her friends could read them at once was, as she said, “easier than calling and talking to each one.”

In many ways, I have never recovered from the sadness of that day. I did not join Facebook, and it would appear that my desire to talk on the phone regarding life’s biggest and smallest moments with one of my dearest friends was not as meaningful to her as the act of my joining Facebook to increase her followers, like her posts, and publicly comment on the contents of posts, which the day before she joined Facebook would have embarrassed her, if anyone but her closest friends knew about said contents. I can tell you, however, that I’ve missed our friendship and the time we used to spend together.

The one place I will be spending time with people is here at The Burning Hearth with you, my readers. I appreciate each and everyone of you, and it delights me to share writers and their amazing works with you. I have some guests coming your way this spring that I’m certain you’ll enjoy. Later this month, I will be posting two archival blogs. One for my “Echoes of Le Guin” series and one for my “Circling Saturn with David Naimon” series.

Until then, Happiest of Happy New Years to you all!!!!!🎉🥳🎊

❤️ Constance