The Fall of 2022

I suppose in the grand scheme of things it will be hard to remember this period. Life’s pageant is enormous and garish. Those that suffer it in reclusive enclaves do so in a way I cannot comprehend. Yet magnificent things are happening all around me. This year I have known success, devastation, victory, stress I could not ever have envisioned, health, illness, the pinnacle of pleasure, greatest depths of pain, and every gradient in between.

I have learned a lot. Some education is more costly. I find the direction heading into winter to be one of hope. Perhaps this will be a year when I truly feel the ground beneath my feet. That has proven elusive in the tumult of the past 4 years. Hell, it has been elusive over the past 2 decades. Perhaps even as far back as childhood. Yet I find I yearn for it. I don’t need boring but normal would surely be welcomed with confetti and speeches.

I have only recently begun to understand what that would even look like. The elusive bastard has worn a mercurial cloak. Add to it the reality that my life has always contained people who functioned best when normal was left on hold. Work remains a place of this type but that is why I have the job (crisis management). There is a certain amount of promise in that future as well. The pandemic has had us operating at 150% for almost 3 years now (talking about the workplace). We are actively looking for a new normal to give us a common canvas.

There has been loss and devastation here too. So many I started with here in 2020 are no longer around. If COVID didn’t get the lungs it killed the funding. What a shite way to get “restructured” – by the very outcome of the situation you served to stabilize. I know, I am not making much sense here but I am leaving this as a placeholder for a future post where I can talk of this topic without hurting people I care about. Please God let this new canvas be enough. I have said enough goodbyes this year.

It is the Saturday before Thanksgiving. I can almost smell the kitchen. I am ready for the laughter that comes with little abandon following a feast and some early merriment. I am ready for the embraces that come with no IOUs. I am ready for the echoes of collective joy and love to bounce throughout the house and remind me of why we do this.

I am not melancholy today. Truth be told I am hopeful. The cosmos has been paying up recently so I have had the chance to stop calling on karma to collect. Life is peaceful. My fear of change has turned to optimism (mostly – old habits and all). I open my arms to it and greet it with a grin and the kind of laugh that starts at your feet.