Posting regularly is an aspiration that I have noted more in its absence than its execution.

We do so much to try and jump start our creativity. And much of it is surface work — easily ignored.

This evening, I decided to browse through old journals, specifically to look back 20 years to 2003.

For me, that was a truly difficult time. So many things shifted that year. Relationship whiplash, an employer who skipped town without paying, running out of money, the passing of my grandmother…

I was desperately trying to not be alone.

I was so worried that I was an inept parent.

And every decision that I made, though they seemed to make sense at the time, didn’t seem to make the situation any better.

For me, 2003, was a year of crumbling artifice, of The Tower. All of the decisions and assumptions of my adult life were withering at once. All I could do was to reduce the scope of life in an attempt to survive. I was pruning away everything that I could, more than I wanted to, in hope that maybe a positive change would come.

It is difficult for me to focus on 2003 without acknowledging what came to be in 2004. Light did come throughout the next year, but when the sky continues to darken, it seems foolhardy to hope for the dawn.

I needed 2003 to be a truly difficult time, to convince me to let go of so much. Looking back, I know that nothing else was going to prepare me for the gauntlet to come.

Twenty years later, and yes, I do feel like I am in a similar place. So much changing around me. My daughter is grown and out on her own.

It feels as if I have spent the last two years, during the pandemic, slowly shedding, culling, and pruning; making my life smaller, more portable.

I know how to prepare for these points of change, even if I do not know where they will lead me.

Right now, I am feeling rudderless. I am well stocked, well provisioned, well equipped, and yet I am still adrift. There is no wind. I am in that eerie calm and the sky seems many shades of foreboding.

Even now, I am fighting to keep my mind within the moment. I am trying to not jump ahead. I am here to learn, or relearn — to remember.

Stay calm. Breathe. Just be.

All will become clear; in time…