It's All About Timing - Value before Purpose

I'm sitting here thinking about what I will write for this post and I find myself noting the pause, the need to take a pause.  

The last two and a half years were hard.  Sad and heavy and hard.  There is a part of me that knows this tiredness that never really goes away.  I lost four people in the latter half of 2023, the first one being my dad, lost two more in '24, and I spent a year and a half helping my sister to care for her mother-in-law who had Alzheimer's.  Even though she passed in July of 24 and my nephew started driving at the beginning of his senior year of high school, it still took all this time to get myself to this place, grounded and centered enough again to start working on my life again, even if it is at a snail's pace.  

Everyone is always expected to pick up the pieces and move on, move forward, something.  I now know that after a significant enough loss(es), life is different and forever changed.  Even right now, I had a moment where I just wanted to curl back up in my bed and sleep to avoid.  

I have some things in place to help keep me motivated.  For this year, I have to learn a line dance a week, teach a line dance once a month, and choreograph one line dance.  I'm using a app to help me with things I have to mindful off or do on the daily.  And I just decided, to help my mom and I, to cook a meal once a week, order in dinner once a week, and prepare various side dishes to have available because my mom and I aren't great about wanting to spend much time in the kitchen.  

Oh, and I have to take on a house project once a week as well.  Even though it's still mom and I here, I have leaned more into the reality that just can't really stay on top of or attend to things around the house like she used to.  I'm at the beginning of leaning into taking care of this house as if I am the only one living in.  There is so much to be done but only taking on a task a week help to deal with the house instead of looking at the whole house as a daunting goal that looks like it will take forever to complete.  

Just like with all these goals and tasks I'm looking to do my best to take on, it's all about starting over and getting back to basics.  Same thing applies to writing.  I don't know where I stand with him because something about it feels so foreign.  I feel no drive to try and work on a novel or a short story, or to try and work on some essays or some poems or whatever.  I want to care but I don't know if I have it in me to want to care about writing anymore.  

So, as far as I can tell, being in the indifferent place with writing may be a good thing.  No expectations to get something done, to get something published.  I can't even tell if what I feel about writing is even laced with any expectations either.  I'm just trying to see if there is anything in me that wants to write for the sake of writing.  

I thought all of this what about finding purpose to life again.  

Before I can even get there, I have to see if life even has enough value to be purposeful. 

Yeah.  Value before purpose.  

  

Because I was somebody...

I was somebody to me.

What's changed?

I'm going to try to be better about maintaining this blog and making more posts. I guess that's all for now.

Intermittent Posting

 I'm not the best with keeping up with this.  It may be weeks between posts.  I will do my best not to do that.  I just installed an app called Finch to help me stick to my daily goals.  It's this really cute app where meeting my goals and quests helps me take care of a little finch as it grows into adulthood.  It may be cutesy and all, but it helps make accountability fun.  Definitely recommend it.  But anyway, yeah, I will try to be better about posting regularly.  

Why Again

"Light the Way Home" was a username that I came up with back when I was in college in Baton Rouge, about two or so decades ago.  

I have always been someone spiritual.  I imagine this was around the time I had discovered MCC of Baton Rouge, a Christian denomination with special attention to the LGBTQIA+ community.  

I wanted a username that was symbolic to my spiritual journey.  Whatever I was headed towards, some part of me wanted to believe that I could be there for others to light the way, not in any spiritually heavy capacity but just by being there for people.  I was finding myself involved in a lot of community and volunteer work and I loved it.  

In 2007, I hit a rough spot where it was really hard to keep myself afloat financially and so I had to cut my losses and move back home to New Orleans.  I eventually found my way out of the darkness and got myself back out there.  During my time with MCC of New Orleans - helping out in the office while the church had to go through a healing period to eventually serving as administrative assistant for five years - I felt the calling in this capacity, even though it came with its challenges.  Eventually, I felt like I wasn't growing in my church and I decided to no renew my contract.  I decided it was time to figure out what I needed to do for me instead of always being there for everybody else.  

For someone like me, that's a hard thing to get away from.  

I took 2019 to try and figure out what to do next but I was pretty unsure about what directions to take. I thought I was going to use the next year as a reset or a reapproach, consider some avenues I hadn't tried before, but then Covid flooded the United States quickly and Louisiana went on lockdown in March.  It was mentally exhausting for everyone.  We did our best to make use of our times and stay active while being stuck at home.  People tried videoing conferencing to compensate for social distancing but I think it also reminded us of how much we missed being with each other.  2021 started to bring some light into the world again.  We were allowed to go in public but still had to masked up and be mindful about spacing and physical interactions.  It was better than nothing.  I think that was the year my line dance group was about to me at a member property where he had a large parking area in the back where we could dance with space between us.  It was good to be with everyone.  So after we were allowed to get the vaccines which made things even better, even with continuing to mask just to be safe.  I think by 2022, things had gotten back to normal.  

But then mom and I were a little more focused on dad.  His health was fine, relatively speaking for where he was physically for his age but we wanted to make sure we attended to him and made sure he was living a comfortable life.  And then we lost him on July 11th of 2023.  He wasn't in any pain; his body just couldn't keep going anymore.  My mom, sister, and I went through the motions to get through the funeral, military burial, and reception and then mom did her 40 day prayer vigil.  It all took about two months.  I thought by this point I was finally going to do some real private grieving on my own, but then I lost some very dear people after loosing my dad - my best friend from church in September, my friend from Baton Rouge in October, and then an internet friend in November. 

I was absolutely broken.  I was numb and felt so dead inside.  I had this relationship with Death as a way to cope. 

And somewhere in the middle of all this, I started helping my sister out when her family had to take in her mother-in-law who had Alzheimer's and a trach after throat cancer.  

2024 started, I lost another dear friend on Valentines Day, and I was trying to be social again despite the sadness and emptiness inside.  I gave very little thought to trying to do someone with my life again but the only thing that made sense to me at this time was to be there for my mother and my sister.  Losing dad may have pulled us closer but the dynamics of our relationships changed in good and challenging way to compensate for the role that dad played in our lives. A few good things had come into my life but it was like I had essentially given up.  I no longer saw the point in anything.  Just do whatever it is I'm supposed to do not and then die.  I didn't had that mentality the entire year.  Towards the latter half, I wasn't so entirely doom and gloom.    

And now here we are in 2025.  

Brennan's band trip to San Antonio was in April, which I attended, along with my sister and her husband.  It was a really great trip.  My sister and her husband were trying to get their mother-in-law into a nursing home because it was just that time.  When we got back from the San Antonio trip, a week later... well it was the beginning of trying to get her into assisted living.  Because of her condition, the facility that wanted to go with a week later decided that they couldn't keep her as she was a risk to other patients.  She ended up at Oschner main campus - with an attempt made at another facility just outside of Alexandria four hours away, which didn't work either - where she is still at.  

The thing for me about all of this was that I was locked into helping my sister out with her son and helping with other-in-law.  We knew helping out wasn't going to be forever but until that point came, I kind of just kept my head down and did my part.  And then, almost out of nowhere, I no longer had to help out with mother-in-law.  And then month later, my nephew was done with his Junior year.  He just scheduled himself for driver's ed which will happen next week, but once he passes that, he will be driving himself to school for his senior year.  I still feel myself like on-call just in case last minute thing comes up and I need to go do something for my sister or my nephew, but for the most part this was the last major family thing I had on my plate.  

I no longer had any obligation to anyone else anymore.  

What do I do now?  

Well, to tie it back to "Light the Way Home", it has only been a month and without even pressuring myself and just trusting the journey, I find myself brainstorming and creating and dreaming again.  As completely messed up the United States is right now, I just remember waking up one day and finding myself free... well, personally free.  I'm 51, I've reached my own level of experience and wisdom in this life, and I find it fairly easy to see who I am and what my life could be outside the confines of the System.  There is this thing, I believe, with the baggage we carry where we reached a point where the weight no longer has any bearing on our shoulders.  I stopped having tensions with my baggage, no done with whatever it all us that it suddenly becomes so easy to just turn and walk away from it all.  Nothing behind me anymore, only what is forward.  And as the days had passed and my mind started to open up once again to the wonder of possibilities, I find my light wanting to shine again.  

I want to get back to all the things I liked doing before, all the things I went to school for, kind of like getting back to basics but I got this experience and wisdom under my belt now.  To hell with everybody else's expectations and dropping too much support myself.  I know the journey, especially for people like me, is a solitary one.  I look at everyone and they all seems like strangers in a crowd.  I believe we hit a certain age and experience in our lives when we realize that people are just to busy with their own lives.  But I also believe the people that do have time for others are the people we share common interests with.  That's the new circle I am searching to find, along with whatever art I a looking to create.  

I am looking for home, my home, again. 

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