Reimagining

I thought I would be able to cook for the rest of my life and I would be ok. I thought that I would at least be able to sing better as I got older, but that didn’t go my way either. I thought I would be able to breathe as I got older, yet that is not the case again. For as much as I believe myself intelligent, I certainly am not smart. I also thought this would be easy. I thought I would just engage in the writing processes and off I would go. That had been my experience, but as in all the other things above, I was in for something different.

I stopped writing because I got busy, and all my other pieces started to look and read like a bad loop. As life moved on, there came changes. Following my own advice a few years ago I had reached out and shouted about needing help. With that, I soon found myself in a Data Analytics bootcamp through a state agency or two. Excited to find something constructive, I also found a deep disbelief in my abilities, I am not exactly educated in the proper sense. The instructor led me through it though and I found myself studying hard and doing well. During this time I lost my best four legged friend Hobbes halfway through it. I was in shock and have been ever since I think. I became the TA for the course going forward after completing the certificate. During my first class as TA I lost my Mother. It was a Sunday, April 14th and on that Monday I was working. Numb and cold, the work was healing at the time. Just help others was her way of life, I wasn’t going to challenge that sentiment now. I was learning and teaching and it did me well. Not only in helping others, but also using what I had found out about myself along the way and trying to apply it the best I could.

I lost a nephew, and a few more friends, and Family just about vanished altogether. But my one brother kept it familiar, we had a Thanksgiving and Christmas for those of us still left who wished to be a part of it all. Health issues progressed during this time, I was busy with being busy and it was fun, I had a purpose so to speak. I tried to write throughout these times and now have a complete mess of thoughts, of pity parties, of growth and of resiliency drafts. But my brain had changed, and I never published things. I thought that I would write again, I believed that it would just take the right content, the right emotion. But what I am faced with in all truth is I have to teach myself to write again.

Time has brought with it now an urgency of self. An I want to leave something behind to it. So my writing is all I have to do this with as well as a comforting friend as everything I knew disappears into the ether. It will be sharper because I am writing me now, I am not too worried about hurting someone’s feelings as to being honest. I am going to try to finish my book ideas and stories and gather them up here for future reference. Then I have to find out how to memorialize the page and leave my wife instructions on that stuff. It could be months, it could be years, it could be tomorrow for all I know? But breathing is important and this hits me like a roller coaster most of the time, good days and bad, and I can’t plan a damn thing.

There’s going to be more, but I thought I would at least reintroduce myself to this place again. It’s going to continue for the time being, and I hope it can help anyone out in the future as they may be going through life’s challenges. This will be my hospice of hope, where the dreams continue to come alive even as I am fading. Just something to leave behind for all of those who have meant so much to me and the stories that still deserve to be told.