It’s been a while since I last opened the blog page and this dormant period has been the most creatively unproductive of my life, not to mention anxiety and stress-filled. Photography and writing took a back burner, in fact, so far back that they were relegated to the subterranean places of my mind. I can’t even begin to describe the desperation and frustration I felt each time I thought of my blog and photography website, and saw how neglected they were. It hurt physically and emotionally, but there was no energy or love left at the end of the work day to write. So the manuscripts (yes, plural) I had been working on suffered tremendously from neglect and desolation and it almost felt as if I had abandoned my children, and in a way I suppose I did.
When your job robs you of the essence of your being and you become a mechanical creature that blindly follows a routine day in and day out, nothing good can come from any of it. By September I was truly beginning to feel the burn out and determined that a radical change was necessary, if I was to pursue my dreams and live the life I moved to Portugal for. Here we are, approaching the end of November, in the end stretch of 2023 and I chose to be the ballsy courageous FrogDiva and dive into the deep end of things. I resigned and as of today, I began the new phase in my life, having laid out the groundwork for all my plans in October and November, in order to launch all the new projects in January 2024.
What, you may be asking, has she done now? Or the better question is, what will she do? Well, I am not one to do thing small and quietly, so I am now a full-time freelance photographer, writer, editor, proofreader, translator and life coach (as soon as I complete my certification next month). Did I mention painter? Not of walls, but of canvases! Very few know this, but once upon a time I dabbled with oil paints and it is something I have been itching to revive, just never had the time or space to do so. My life has always been about fusion, either cultural, culinary, musical, or even linguistic, but this time I will take up a notch and fulfil a dream of transcending the limitations of photography and painting and merge them both into a single art piece. This will most likely translate into several canvases stitched together, but hey, go big or go bust! I can see some of those eyebrows rising already, but let’s be honest, when have you ever known me to do anything by the book? Stay tuned for further developments on everything I mentioned above. The photography website will be undergoing a revamp and rebranding, and the art will also be launched soon, so stay tuned.
As for reviving the creative soul, I have been taking the camera on walks around the Shire again, and it has been a joy to reconnect with it again. There is something so deep and intrinsically bound to my core that had been missing, that it felt as though a flame has been rekindled within me. Those of you who follow me on Instagram have already seen some of these, but now you understand the context better.
FrogDiva Thoughts 
Go, Tess, go!
Thanks Heidi! Am going! Am going!