The shortest month of the year had seen me start with the left foot first, so to say. But it wasn’t that bad, in the end.

I originally wanted to go hiking on the 1st, but this plan was gone before I even had the destination figured out – by the day before, I was feeling all sorts of weird, and my appetite was gone almost completely. And whatever hit me took me the whole week to recover from. Thus, I had to abandon the idea of going hiking even on the 8th as I wasn’t feeling well enough for that, after being easily exhausted throughout the week. This had a minor advantage – with my mood down and my drive for almost anything as low as my appetite, I managed to read at quite a decent pace.

With my recovery, I haven’t moved on to read another book in the typical sense – if you remember my review of Elven Blood from a month ago, I’m still not sure if I should continue that series.

Instead, I turned my attention somewhere else. I started working on a series of blog posts on a particular topic I’d like to release during the spring, which got me to read snippets of related books. I guess better than nothing, even though no progress on my reading goals.

While that was not the return to writing part of me hoped for, it was still fulfilling enough to get myself to focus my thoughts on something. Eventually, with some of those posts in early drafts, I returned to reading some bits of my own drafts that I think might need some work, and my thoughts eventually focused on some issues I’ve discovered when it comes to the transition between books two and three – I discovered those after noticing some changes I made to the beginning of book three almost two years ago and pretty much forgot about.

The second half of the month also gave me a chance to return to hiking. Cautiously at first, as I felt a bit stiff on the hike. But things got better soon. We also get a chain of cold mornings, which was something I decided to use. With the snow in the hills compact and frozen through, I decided to take two days off work and use one of those for an extra hike. I’ll share more about those, including photos, soon. The good part is that I’ve felt well enough during the extra hike on Thursday and the “normal” hike on Saturday. And I managed to keep up with my loose goal of three hikes a month.

The end of February brought some hints of the coming spring with warmer afternoons – just a week after a week of cold mornings. And it seems that some warmth is expected to come in at least the first week of March, which makes me excited – the time of the first flowers is coming up, which is always a nice part of the year.

Aside from that, I hope to return to regular reading – and not just snippets – soon enough. I’ve decided to give the sequel to Elven Blood a try, despite the flaws the first book had, especially in punctuation. But I’m also ready to abandon it if it doesn’t work for me.

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So, that’s a quick look back at February. I’m feeling optimistic about the next month, and I hope it’ll be a good time for you as well.