August can be tricky, so I'm doing it differently this year

August can be a tricky month.

Whether you have children, don't have children, go on holiday, don't go on holiday - things do shift a bit, and there's a few things happening at The Silent Why HQ that are a bit different too.

Welcome to another episode from me, Claire Sandys, host of The Silent Why podcast. This one is a bit of an update on what's happening over the next few weeks, and why, but it also contains some encouragement for you in this funny old month we call August.

I've decided to take some time over the next few weeks of August and September to focus on my fiction writing and I'm very excited about it. This means that I'll be putting out episodes every other week, rather than weekly, until mid-September.

I'm not the only one doing this, I've seen other people choosing August as a time to step back a bit from the day-to-day work and focus on other areas that get neglected - maybe that's an idea for you too if you run your own business or do a lot of content creation?

However, in September I'm back with some great topics to look at for our 101 losses list, and you hear a sneak peak of what they are in this episode.

And this episode isn't just an update, I've also included the blog I did on The Season of August, to encourage those who might be struggling with, or daunted by, the month ahead.

And if you'd prefer to read the original blog post, you can find it here: https://www.thesilentwhy.com/post/theseasonofaugust

Don't forget you can support the show, and ultimately fuel my tea drinking while I'm writing over the summer by visiting Buy Me A Coffee (link below). 

Transcript

Claire Sandys: Hello there. I just wanted to give you a bit of an update on what’s going to be happening on the podcast over the next few weeks, and explain why. 

I know August is a funny time for a lot of people, whether it’s busier because more people are off work, quieter because you’re not at work, a time for holiday, a time for avoiding anywhere people go on holiday outside of term time, intense at home with the kids, your favourite time of being home with the kids, lonely because everyone’s with kids, fending of comments and questions from people who assume you have kids, plus other situations that exist that have nothing to do with kids (yes, they do exist in August!) - whatever your situation it can be a hard/weird month. 

And I’m actually using this August and some of September to have a break from podcast editing and recording to focus on my fiction writing. And I’m very excited about it. Not only does it release me from having to find quiet times to record when the kids around us are playing in the garden and it gets picked up on my microphone, but I’m actually really loving the idea of some intentional writing time that’s longer than a week or two. 

So the plan is this - over the next few weeks I’m going to be releasing an episode every other week, instead of every week (because the amount of editing involved ahead of time to get one out every week is just a bit intense to do in July - especially as it’s my birthday month!). 

However, do not fear, I have a whole host of guests lined up for interviews from September onwards, and I’m excited about our next batch of 101 losses which include subjects like eating disorders, disenfranchised grief, cumulative grief and loss of a parent you didn’t know if you loved or not. Plus, I’ve got Let’s Chat’s on areas like parenting as a widow, how faith fits into loss and facing cancer - all episodes that will continue to help us understand this very complicated area of loss and grief.

So to kick this tricky month off I thought it might be a good time to re-publish the My Why I did on - The Season of August.

For those of you that didn’t listen to the podcast when I did these blog posts initially, I decided to do a blog on each month of the year for the whole 12 months, to see what each month was teaching me, and what I/we could learn from it and through it. You can listen to or read any of them through your podcast player by searching for the month name, they’re all entitled ‘The Season of … [insert month name]’, or on the blog page of the website, by clicking on the topic ‘Seasons’. 

What I loved about these blogs in particular, is that if I did them all again, they’d all be completely different. I can’t even remember what I wrote each month because I just penned them from the heart and the season that I was in at the time (literally and in life). And from your feedback I know that you loved them too. I also know that whenever anyone listens to them, each one will always have something to say into the life of the person listening, because that was my intention when I wrote them. So I hope you get something from listening to this, whether it’s for the first time, or whether you’ve heard it before. 

Enjoy.

For full transcipt of The Season of August blog/episode visit: https://www.thesilentwhy.com/post/theseasonofaugust