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.
