AMBER LOVE 18-MAY-2017 If you’re wondering why it’s been so quiet over here, I’ve had to spend a lot of time figuring out Life. Ugh. I suck at this stuff.

Yesterday, I drove over an hour to a gorgeous suburb of Trenton to meet a yoga instructor. I’ve been considering taking yoga teacher training since I was in my 20s and instead I went to massage school.

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I don’t regret the thousands of dollars on massage training because I learned so much about myself, the human body, and science. I got to incorporate the type of alternative work I like once in a while. Not to mention, it inspired me to make my protagonist a massage therapist/sleuth.



When my body went from over 180 to 120, I thought the time then was probably right. Instead I tried to make a new life in a new city and failed miserably. Yoga training, though my body was ready for it, my life wasn’t. Now I’m nearly back to my old weight and wrestling with anxiety, pain, and depression so much. Fortunately, the new meds help a lot with all this except I’m tired almost all the time. How can I possibly consider another “career” that is all physical? Massage was freaking hard, people! It was tiring work.

Now it’s where I’m psychologically ready, but my body is like, “fuck no, go back to bed.”

Like any discipline, the training never stops. That’s one of the reasons I bailed on massage — I couldn’t keep paying for CEUs when I wasn’t bringing in enough income to cover it. My mother, the saint, is willing to once again cover the cost for me because she thinks it would be healthy for me to have a purpose that forces me out of the house. Yesterday’s single morning trip did present with anxiety on the drive down, but I didn’t have a complete meltdown like I often do. Plus it’s summer and I wasn’t going through six inches of slushy ice or anything.



I’m still plugging away at the witchcraft book too. It seems every time I think maybe that’s enough, I discover something else to add. It’s short, but I wanted it to be something that people wouldn’t get bored with. The first parts are politically heavy (cultural appropriation, what’s a slur, etc); then there’s light stuff about music, witchy wardrobes, and spell work.

Feel free to tell me about big life changes you’ve gone through. Did you feel forced to make the change? Did you feel like you were heading in a better direction? What was the outcome?



Founder and Editor-in-Chief of AmberUnmasked.com and Vodka O'Clock Podcast. Author of The Farrah Wethers Mysteries, comic book short stories, prose, and non-fiction. Cosplayer and figure model.