Sorry I’ve been away for a while. 2020 is off to a shitty start, I must admit.
Just as I thought a prolonged and painful job search was coming to an end, the pandemic hit. When it looked like an offer was finally coming – everyone shut down, hunkered down and went dark.
And to top it all off – I had a death in my family last week. It’s turning out to be a hell of a year, emphasis on hell.
There’s been some adjustment to the stay at home orders where we live. It wasn’t great, but it was tolerable – up until my sister passed. Now I feel like WTF, I want to go have a wake and see my brother in law, my niece and nephew, visit with them and make sure they’re OK. I want to go somewhere, grab a coffee and let them talk to me. I want to know what happened. I want to hug everyone, tell them they’re OK, we will all get through this and it’s going to be OK.
I can’t do that right now and it hurts. It sucks. We’ll do a celebration of life when all this clears up but right now we can’t. It’ll have to wait.
Over the course of my life I’ve lost friends, neighbors, family…it always hurts. But I don’t think any of them would want me to sit here, feeling sorry for myself and pounding my fists on my desk in frustration at things I can’t change.
When I was a kid and didn’t want to do something, my father would walk over to me and very calmly tell me I was wasting more time fighting it than if I just did whatever it was I needed to do. We’d have some back and forth over this and eventually I’d wind up just doing it. I never liked it, but it got done and afterward I’d be free to go do what I really wanted to.
This is one of those things I have to begrudgingly admit my father was right about. I didn’t like it then, I don’t like it now, and I doubt I’ll ever like this. But for now it’s the way it is.
I also think he’d want me to channel some of this anger into something more constructive. Thus onto more writing. I’ll be getting back to the weekly schedule again sharing writing advice and tips soon. I promise.