Finally... Finally we are emerging from the me, myself, and I conundrum. We've gone from having no where to go, and nobody to spend time with (and no HUGS! I really missed hugs!) to re-learning our navigation of being around people. It hasn't been easy for anybody!
Being humans, we need physical interaction and being locked down, working from home, and forced to really learn who the people we live with are, has taken a toll on who we are as individuals and has shifted the collective. We jump, duck, move and frown when people around us cough. Remember when we all went to work even though we felt like crap only to have to return home after exposing everyone to whatever we had? We've lost our favorite watering holes, eateries, and hang-outs. We've been required to reimagine what 'working' means and many of us have embarked on finding or trying to figure out what we really wanted to be when we grew up.
We've lost loved ones, friends, acquaintances, and people that we sometimes didn't know we'd miss. Our horizons have been expanded due to the need to learn how to use and engage in the electronic connections to each other, whether we've wanted to or not. (Hello clients on the East coast, and then there's the two in Wales.) There's been a lot of re-evaluation and re-categorization of our expectations and what we consider 'normal' to be.
Fear has been given a new description, and new definitions. A virus that painfully kills. Material possessions that can lose their value becoming unimportant, or become unavailable when needed. Toilet paper, cleaning products, masks, disinfectants, doctors, nurses, buses, trains, planes, ships, trucks, classrooms, church congregations, concerts, conferences, parties, dating, common sense, compassion, trust. The reduction in customer service - in every industry that touches our lives. A small, and incomplete list of some of the things that we've learned to do without, and perhaps still haven't fully recovered from they're absence.
I marvel at our resilience and our pessimism. While we are rebounding and finding flexibility in coming back from the darkness that threatened to defeat us, we are still not quite meeting the needs of the many in lieu of catering to the few. But I still have faith in us, and hope for our future. We still have babies being born and they're smarter than we were at their age. We still have young people graduating from school with ideas, desires and enthusiasm about making change and a difference. We also have all of us survivors who are embracing change. There is still hope that we won't completely destroy ourselves, a la 'pickadisastermoviescenario'.
It's been a long time since you've heard from me because I've had my own tribulations. I'm coming out of isolation too. There's news to share. I finished Freedom Rings: Book 3 of The Circle and it will be released July 1, depending on shipping of course. I'll be at the Denver FanExpo (aka ComicCon) in July, Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers conference in September, and the National Black Book Festival in Houston in October. I've got an article in the April edition of Wordsmith Magazine. And there are four more titles I'm working on - two non-fiction and two fiction. Business is going well; people need the energy healing I offer. The twins keep me hopping. They're three and a half now. That was fast.
My family is hanging in there, and I hope that yours is too. We aren't done with all the changes, and that virus isn't done with us yet either. Stay safe. Take care of you. I'll keep writing, and endeavor to be more productive here too.
Namaste'
Hope springs eternal.
