I love chilly mornings.  Waking up snuggled in bed, listening to the even breath of husby, the snurfling of Lucy Lou.  Knowing there is time before anyone moves, before the day begins.

Recently they ‘trimmed’ the trees along the road below our house and now, it sounds like a Nascar racetrack most early mornings, when the sun is just beginning to lighten the sky — deep blues and purples turning to grays and violets.

The sun rises from the behind the hills that we see from our bedroom windows.  A horizon of red and orange melting to pink and then corn yellow before opening up into a crisp blue-white morning.  Birds are chirping and life is humming.

It’s been a strange October … it’s been a strange year.  Nothing will ever be the ‘same’ again … we have irrevocably shifted course and we must acknowledge that and move forward within that  … even if it feels as though no one is on the same page.

Maybe it’s always been that way.  Maybe I’m only just seeing it now, as I come around the corner of ‘middle age’  … and begin to realize that nothing is as we were taught.  None of the rules mean anything.  No one knows what they are doing – no one.  We are all just making it up as we go.

I feel suspended in time, not quite here and not quite there.  Anticipating the future, mourning the past.  But not quite present.  I long to find the person I used to be but also, wonder if she even exists anymore.  It’s been a long time since March 2020 when the whole world changed.  It feels longer still since May 2020 when George Floyd died.  I cannot unsee what I have seen … and yet nothing has changed.  Isn’t that peculiar and also so indicative of our culture?  Disappointing.  Infuriating.  Exhausting.

I move through the day doing what I ‘should’ do … according to … I don’t know.  Me?  The world? Social media?

I read once that we are not who we think we are.  And we are not who other people think we are.  We are who we think other people think we are.

So does that mean we are self-imposing uncomfortable and unnatural guidelines to our lives?  How do we shake that overly layered and unnecessarily complicated filter?

I can tell you one thing – I do not know.

I know that I come here to speak to the void, but also to speak to anyone who stumbles upon this page and keeps reading.  I am speaking to the other curious people out there, feeling lost and looking for answers.

I do not think answers will ever exist.

And getting comfortable with *that* is the hardest task of all.

xoxo, g