Personal Note: Six Months

My last post on this blog was on December 7th, 2015.  Six months ago.  Much like a New Year's resolution to hit the gym, recommiting to the a creative endeavor can be fraught with much of the same personal pitfalls.  How many of us have told ourselves we are going to get in shape this year, to hit the gym three times a week, and then failed to show after week 3?  I know I have.  The blog is much the same way.  Once I miss a writing goal, I appear to abandon my craft entirely.  Here's the thing.

I don't care.  I have to get back on this pony eventually.  I can't allow myself to put so much emphasis on my failings.  They are things of the past, and I cannot change the past.  I am here now, and I am typing words on to the screen.  That is all that matters.  I fell down, but now I must get back up.

The thing that brought me back to the screen?  A funeral.  The funeral hasn't happened yet.  It is on Wednesday, but, once again, people close to me have chosen to enlist me to help them say goodbye to a loved one.  The person who died?  Margaret Ellen Gitts, my friend's grandmother.

I had met her before, sure, but I didn't know the woman well, but I got the chance to talk to her family and I received emails detailing aspects of her life.  My job is to then distill all of this rich material into a shorter form, to put it in some kind of order, to make sense of a 90 year old woman's life in the space of about 20 minutes.  I loved every minute of it.

The reason I did?  Margaret was FASCINATING.  She was a wonderful Depression-era woman who sewed, cooked, ran a dairy farm, a dahlia farm, who raised 5 kids and a gaggle of grandkids.  She made her family's clothes for generations, learned to ski in her 60s, she traveled the world in her later years.  She devoured life with a passion and grace I am forced to marvel at.  She is wonderful.

So, how did that bring me back here to this page?  It brought me back to writing because I realized that more than anything I like making sense of the world by processing it in words.  I love the complexity of life, and I love the challenge of trying to distill that complexity into something that others understand.  I love...connection, and my words are my best tool for making that connection.

My perch on the patio.  Not bad.

Writing about the family's love for Margaret reminded me that I love the world too, and my way of loving is to tell my reader's how much this world is worth our affection.  It's been a long time since I've been here, sitting under the starlit sky at two in the morning with a glass of whiskey and the sound of the wind and the keyboard in my ears.  I'll try not to stay away so long next time, but if I do disappear again, I know I will be forced to forgive myself until I find my way back.