A Blank Page, a Heavy Heart, and a New Year

 The start of a new year always brings with it an air of hope. For me, it’s a chance to reset, to make promises to myself, to dream of everything I can accomplish in the months ahead. Yet this year, that hope feels tangled in something heavier.

For weeks now, I’ve been stuck in the quicksand of writer’s block. Every time I sit down to write, I stare at the blank page, willing the words to come, only to find myself frozen. It’s not that I don’t know what I want to say—it’s that the weight of saying it feels overwhelming.

This isn’t a block that’s lasted for months. It’s been weeks, but those weeks feel longer than they should, like time is dragging itself out to test my patience. I’ve always loved writing. It’s my escape, my therapy, my way of bringing order to the chaos in my mind. But right now, the words feel trapped somewhere inside me, as if they’re afraid to come out.

I think part of it is fear. Fear of failure. Fear that the story I’m trying to tell won’t live up to the version in my head. Fear that once I finish this book, I’ll have no more excuses to delay sending it out into the world. Writing has always been deeply personal for me, but sharing my work? That’s terrifying.

This book—the fantasy novel I’ve been working on—means so much to me. It’s more than just a story; it’s a piece of my heart. The world I’ve created feels alive in my mind, its characters like old friends who have been waiting patiently for me to tell their story. I’ve spent countless nights dreaming of their journeys, their triumphs, their heartbreaks. And yet, the closer I get to finishing it, the more I feel paralyzed by the thought of letting it go.

But this year, I’m making a resolution to finish it. No matter how hard it gets, no matter how many days I stare at the screen, struggling to find the words, I will finish this book. Because this isn’t just a promise to myself—it’s a promise to the younger version of me who always dreamt of writing stories that would touch people’s hearts.

And that’s not the only resolution I’m making.

This year, I want to write another book, one that feels even more personal and important. I want to write a book for and about my dad.

Losing him has been one of the most complicated and painful experiences of my life. It’s a grief I still don’t fully understand, a mix of sadness, anger, disappointment, love, and longing. He was my dad—my hero in so many ways—but he was also someone who hurt me, someone who wasn’t perfect, someone who left behind a legacy that’s difficult to reconcile.

Writing about him feels like an impossible task. How do you put into words a person who was so much more than the sum of their actions? How do you capture the good and the bad, the love and the pain, the admiration and the betrayal? How do you write about someone you’re still trying to forgive?

But I know that writing this book is something I need to do. Not just for him, but for me. It’s my way of processing everything, of making sense of the tangled emotions I’ve been carrying since his death. It’s my way of honoring the man he was, even if he wasn’t the perfect father I once believed him to be.

This book will be my way of saying goodbye to him, of letting go of the anger and disappointment, and holding on to the love that will always remain.

So here I am, at the start of a new year, staring at a blank page and feeling the weight of these promises. They scare me. They make me doubt myself. But they also fill me with hope. Because I know that if I can push through the fear, if I can find the courage to put my heart into words, the end result will be worth it.

Writing isn’t just about putting words on a page. It’s about connection—connecting with ourselves, with our emotions, and with the people who might one day read our stories and see pieces of themselves in them. And that’s what I want to remember every time I feel stuck: that the blank page isn’t my enemy. It’s just waiting for me to take the first step.

If you’re reading this and you’ve been feeling stuck, whether it’s in writing or in life, I hope you know you’re not alone. We all have our own blank pages to face, our own fears to overcome. And maybe, just maybe, this is the year we can do it together.

Here’s to filling the blank pages, to keeping the promises we’ve made to ourselves, and to writing the stories that matter most.

With hope, 

Me