January is a pretty easygoing month at our house. Except for Belle’s birthday, we’re all in hibernation mode.

The early evenings equal a lot of movie marathons and game nights. They also mean a lot of time for content generation.

At least, that’s what January is usually like – but 2024 had other plans.

This month steamrolled right over me. Brandon and Belle had to go to the ER, Belle turned 16, family visited from out of town, several podcast interviews were canceled, and I lost about 4 hours of podcast episodes to sound drop issues.

Between trips to the ER, caring for sick family members, and Belle’s birthday, there’s been no time to sit at the computer to produce new content.

I swear 2024 does not care that I ate my greens and black-eyed peas.

It wasn’t a total wash, though. In my free moments, I was able to complete quite a bit for y’all behind the scenes. Here’s what I’ve been up to:

• The podcast is now available anywhere you’d like to listen.
• I made the jump to a new podcast recording host. Hopefully, this alleviates the sound drop issues and means episodes are published on a more reliable schedule.
• I invested in new podcasting equipment – professional studio headphones for edits and a new mic for interviews.
• Podcast transcripts will be available soon.
• Episode show notes are being overhauled to include more detail about each discussion.
• Ebie recorded a new podcast theme song for me. I’ll share that with everyone after I get it ripped from its CD.
• Melissa Vera invited me to co-host NC Chats on Instagram Live. Once a month, we’ll be discussing different places and topics about North Carolina.
• Where the Dogwood Blooms has a new TikTok account. I don’t know when I’ll dive into it, but video content is on the horizon.

I think that’s it, y’all. Everything I’ve been working on behind the scenes will be available soon. And now that Brandon’s feeling better, I can get back to celebrating life in the Old North State!