Category: Captain’s Log

I am thinking about the upcoming holidays. Around here we have a Thanksgiving Day and then Christmas a few weeks after. I will have some time off work and school for T-Day, which will be grand, and then a week after the end of school it’ll be X-Mas Time. I know the rest of the world doesn’t celebrate American Thanksgiving, though our North-of-the-border cousins have their own variety in October, but much of the world does celebrate Yuletide in one variant or another. I love the end of year holidays!

It is no secret that my favorite season is autumn. In more sensible areas than Texas, my current residence, the air is crisp and cool, the leaves change color and fall to crunch underfoot, and you can smell wood fires as they heat homes. Here in Dallas, today, it was 72F and sunny. Not a bad day, but not quite one on which to heat up the fireplace either. I am thankful for temperate weather, though for the rest of the week it’ll be proper sweater weather.

I am thinking about the upcoming holidays. This will be my thirty-sixth time celebrating with family and friends. I know when I was younger, holidays were the best, but in some ways, I enjoy them more as an adult. The experience seems richer, somehow. The freedom and the fun, the joy and the jubilation remains; but it is stronger, more potent, and deeper, somehow. I love the feelings the holidays bring, especially when I can share them with my parents, my wife, my sister, and her kids. The unrestrained exuberance of shredding wrapping paper on Christmas morning isn’t mine so much anymore, but I still get that from my nieces.

Thanksgiving is all about turkey and football and punkin pie, as ever, but the day spent preparing food and enjoying it, and then relaxing with those I love is like being wrapped in contentment. I am thankful for many things this year, and I will give those thanks into the universe, because I believe the practice of appreciation to be important. I am grateful for my health – still here after Covid tried to kill me, and I’m not getting over that one. I have a great wife, she who keeps me going. Grad school accomplished the goals that I set for it. I feel ready to move into the next stage of learning and life after I finish studies in a few weeks. I have toys to play with and the means to enjoy myself, even if sometimes it is a strife against sadness to get there. Eventually I arrive in a space where I can create, and I love it.

I am thinking about the upcoming holidays. I get so much from being able to give to others. I know there is so much more than American rampant commercial capitalism, but finding the right thing to bless someone with never fails to bring happiness. And it isn’t always a thing either, sometimes it is an experience or an intangible feeling. Sure, the aforementioned nieces love the things, but they are young yet. Everything for a season, and who doesn’t love unwrapping toys?? I sure still do, if I am honest. Christmas is more than presents, and the greatest gifts are our time and presence, which I can give in abundance.

When Thanksgiving break hits on Wednesday, I am going to break out the Christmas decorations, one of my favorite activities this time of year. I remember my mother unpacking Christmas year after year, and the magic of the lights, the colors, and the pretty things, the special objects that helped to focus that magic into a season. I love doing that for myself and my wife. It never fails to make me smile when the place is decorated and each time we come back home to see all the pretty. We have a new tree for the living room, and I’ve got a few ideas of how to switch up decor for this new holiday time. I can’t wait to see how it will all work together. I can practically smell the magic, and the pine, on the air. (The pine might be artificial, as this is Texas, after all.)

I am thinking about the upcoming holidays. Movies, memories, and fresh-made hot cocoa on a cold night: just right! I enjoy the music that we pull out once a year to sing along to, to quietly contemplate, and to spin on the record player. I have my favorite renditions, as do we all, and each year I add to my playlist new covers and new songs. I love Apple Music for being able to instantly add and stream things I’ve never heard before. (Add technology to my list of thankful notes.) I love my HomePods so I can listen anywhere in rich, space filling sound. I love my AppleTV for being able to watch holiday films, both old classics (The Muppet Christmas Carol, The Santa Clause) and new discoveries (Spirited!). Yeah, I’m a fanboy. Shrug emoji.

I’ve a smile on my face for the holidays are here! Seasons greetings to you as there are more than the two holidays I celebrate. However you choose to spend your end-of-year, I trust you will be able to do it in the way that brings you the most of whatever you need. I’ve got turkey in the freezer, a wish-list growing, and a term paper to write. It’ll be a quick break, which I need, then a final sprint to a few weeks well-earned comfort. I don’t want to rush anything because I want to savor everything again this year. The season seems to hurry by more quickly as I get older, but my capacity for it has only grown in proportion to its haste. Besides, I get to decide now when to put up my tree and when to take it down, so the season can last as long as it needs to!

I am thinking about the holidays, and soon the bird will be in the oven and Santa Claus’ll be coming down Santa Clause Lane!

First off, this whole post is ironic: my internet connection has been down since this morning some time. A technician came by this evening to diagnose the problem and something something new fiber optic cable needs to be run from a pole to…somewhere. I didn’t even know this old 70’s era house had something as newfangled in it as fiber optic cabling, but it does. But I’m typing from my phone which has The Interwebs because we are living in the future now. (It’s fun.)

I wrote yesterday about feeling disconnected from my hobbies, and how my life seems sucked up by work and school. Which it is. But that’s only half of the story. The other half of the story is what I want to tell you now.

Truth is, I have a good thing going. I have been lucky and fortunate to attend grad school, and to be doing fairly well at it, too. That is due in no small part to my wife who sacrificed to help pay for the classes, and who patiently lets me complain about professors and assignments. She, my wife, is great. It’s due to her working at the school that got me a partial discount even before we paid for tuition. It’s due to her encouragement that I keep going even through a rough class and an opaque professor. I wouldn’t have made it this far without her.

My wife continually cheers me up at work. She commiserates through the boring, difficult, and existential whateverness of it all. I enjoy my job, but nothing is all roses and cupcakes, and she, again, is long-suffering when I complain or have an arduous day. I keep going because of my wife.

And in my hobbies, where I have trouble, my wife again supports me. She helps me keep going when I am able. What I didn’t say in my previous post is that much of what happens is depression underneath the veil of exhaustion, and she understands that, which is rare. Really, I’m more mentally spent than physically, and it takes so much mental energy to go-go-go that when I arrive home, all I want to do is have it all stop. But that means no hobbies, and then I feel unfulfilled. It’s a wicked place to be in.

One thing I learned last year was to look for minutes to reclaim. I took a training course to be better at my then-Human Resources job, and part of that was to find time in my day to work on what needs to be done, and while doing that, find stopping points so that I could be interruptible. Along with Adam Savage’s example of stealing time that I discussed before, I have the training and awareness necessary to fit hobbies into my day. I lack the mental energy, or the discipline, to seize hold of opportunity.

That is where I need to improve myself. But I am lucky to have my wife, she who chose me; she motivates me to keep going, to not give up, and gives me space to pursue my passions of toy photography, making, writing, and reading and anything else I am interested in. I am very privileged.

While yes, it is frustrating to not be able to connect or indulge, there is yet more to learn and build up strength for in my life. I had a long talk with my wife this morning about all this, and I walked away with new insight and with hope that I didn’t have last night. I guess that is the season I have placed myself in right now: a season of learning.

I worked very hard to graduate high school and from an institute and a university to achieve my diploma and degree that it wiped me out for a while. But as Gandalf says to Bilbo in the film version of the Hobbit, “You’ve been sitting for far too long!” It’s about time I embrace the chaos of adventure once again, and come home “trailing mud and twigs” and awaken parts of my heart and psyche too long dormant.

This probably won’t mean that I create tomorrow, but then again, why not? Why shouldn’t it mean that? It proved difficult jumping back into class, but I did that! Why can’t I jump into a hobby or two? All it’ll take is encouragement, which I have, and a little determination, of which I have some lying around here somewhere, too.

So here I go, off into the Wild, with a humble thank-you to my wife. She is someone special in my life. I gain so much through her. May we come through trials together, and be better for it after all!

I feel disconnected from my life. My last entry here is all about the halfway point to the semester, and the wonder, joy, and excitement that brought. But if I am to be completely honest, I feel that something is lacking. And something is lacking: my hobbies. In the busyness and the bustle of work and school, I come home and I find that I don’t have the energy to sit down and paint, or photograph, or fiddle with building, or any of the things that make me smile outside of class and the office.

I am grateful to have taken this journey back to school, and I am thankful to have a job to bring in a little cash, but..

I am missing the other parts of myself.

I read occasionally, when I can focus, but I do so much reading for class that when I am done, I rarely want to pick up another book, no matter how enjoyable. I have done so much writing for class, I have neglected my blogs and personal writing, which is why my last entry was in October and this is now November.

I am trying not to be hard on myself, yet it is difficult to lay aside the self-judgment and self-criticism. I have written much on this blog about not expecting too much, or expecting the wrong things, of myself, so I won’t go into that here, just the feelings exist and are powerful. My point here is I know I am working hard, and that isn’t a bad thing.

My hero, Adam Savage, has a bit in which he talks about when he started working in commercial special effects, and later, at Industrial Light and Magic, that he put aside his personal creative endeavors because he was fulfilling that need through his work life (and his work life often took time away from his personal creativity). I don’t feel that way here. I feel robbed, not fulfilled, by work and class. Adam does say, too, that whenever he had a spare hour or two during Mythbusters he would hide away in his shop and meditate through building. That is a lesson I could do well to master.

Adam Savage has another bit of wisdom he has shared before, and that is “this is what’s happening” which is a life philosophy about working with what is right in front of you. I spend so much time wishing things were different, or wishing I was elsewhere. I need to let that go, and deal with what is. Right now? That’s work and school. A time may come for hobbies and more freedom, but that isn’t today. Tomorrow I may come up with a way to rearrange my mental furniture, or imbibe more energy, but today? That isn’t what’s happening.

What is happening right now is that I have had a good day today. I completed a project that I didn’t think I would. I got some good rest. I caught up on Tested videos (Adam Savage’s YouTube channel) and I am listening to some good music while I update my blog. Oh! and I got paid yesterday, which allowed me to renew my domain name for another two years. Yay! I need to deal with what is, and let the next thing come and deal with that when it gets here. Along the way, I think it might not be a bad thing to manage expectations and time to try to sneak in a hobby or two.

I like air conditioning in the summer mornings. When I wake, and pull myself out of bed, there is a chill in the air: it feels like autumn, if even for a second. Summer here in North Texas (where I’ve made my home for an alarming seven years now) is so brutal lately as to be overwhelming. I was reading another blog which talked about change being slow, inevitable, and arriving when it will. That is North Texas. Summer arrives sometime in May (usually) and won’t leave until well after solstice, until it is good and ready.

Leaves don’t fall from trees in North Texas because the days have finally turned chilly and the sunlight is fading above branches. No, leaves fall because the land turns parched in the scorching sun, and there is little to sustain them in the boughs of their tree. Even today, two days removed from October, leaves litter my lawn and driveway and the high will be near 100 on the Fahrenheit scale. This morning I awoke to the artificial chill, and longed for true autumn. It will arrive slowly, heralded by what summer should feel like in more temperate, reasonable climes. Sometime around November and into December will come a chill in the air, chased out by a warm, sunny afternoon.

By January and February, something like real cold will descend just to remind people what jackets and hoodies are for, before leaving for a brief spring. Summer roars back in a vengeance, withholding rain and drenching all the lands in harsh sunlight once more. Or so it has seemed and been for the years I have lived here. Certainly climate change is working its dark, evil magic on weather patterns, and maybe in the long ago before times Texas wasn’t so harsh, so much a crucible to test a person’s will to live in heat and misery. I know not, that was long before me.

I remind myself of autumn with decorations and false maple leaves strewn around my living room, and a picture of mountains topped with arboreal color on my computer’s desktop. It almost works. For a brief time, when the AC turns on again to blow cool air into the room, and I lose myself in the image, I can dream of autumn. It “…shakes me like a cry/ Of bugles going by” as a favorite poet, Bliss Carman, would say. A “touch of manner, hint of mood” he would say about the penultimate season. That is all I feel I grasp here in North Texas.

It may not always be so, and wasn’t. I grew up in Virginia where the four seasons lived when I was young. I also spent time in upper New York State and Penn’s Woods where four seasons yet reign (though New York was, like Wisconsin after, ironically flipped from Texas. There winter never wanted to leave, slumbering deep beneath heavy blankets of snow, if you’ll pardon the cliché). Maybe someday I’ll journey like a vagabond once more to a place where leaves change in the chill of real cold. Maybe someday.

For now, I’ll try to make my peace with the pieces of fall that I do get, artificial or not, and turn the calendar page from September to October, though the seeming eternal summer still reigns outside. Just now, I can hear through the (closed) window the muted roar of someone’s lawnmower. Grass grows again following recent, begrudging rain. We haven’t needed to mow for months of drought. Lawns leapt upwards in hope, only to be cruelly cut down. I wouldn’t really care to cut grass, except for the conformity of it all and the fact that suddenly, in the tall spikes, I can lose sight of my small dog and I’d rather she not have to struggle through thickets just to pee. No one should, really.

The morning train barrels by behind my house, and shakes me from my reverie. Time to be about the busyness of life. May autumn bring blessings to you, wherever you be and whenever she arrives. When the leaves fall, may it remind you, not of death, but of the new life that shedding old things brings.

The last time I wrote on this blog, I started reading Stephen King’s On Writing. I don’t remember because my memory is unreliable these days. I know because I use an app to track my reading, and it says it took me thirteen days to read On Writing.

In the Before Times Long Ago, I would have read King’s book in an afternoon, or even quicker, but since graduating university, my ability to read books has lessened over time. I’d not be able to concentrate, and the will to read would not materialize for weeks (or even longer).

Then came the bout with Covid that nearly killed me. I think I read during that week, but in a haphazard way. I didn’t start or finish a book, but read selections from the Star Wars trilogy novelizations. That exercise was to stave off the boredom of potential death more than a real effort to read anything straight through.

Since Covid, all I have really read, aside from a few books here and there (I think Carrie Fisher’s and Anthony Daniels’s memoirs were among the longest), were picture books: The Art of Star Wars in several volumes. I am certain I’ve written about my frustration with being unable to read before on this blog.

Finishing On Writing feels like a breakthrough. King endorses reading as much as possible if one wishes to be a writer. That advice you will find in any treatise on writing. I also believe it. Something about the way King espouses that sentiment struck through my mental fog straight to my reader’s core. I want to read again, and frequently. I cannot say the desire existed much before.

I wanted to read in the way that people want to exercise or eat healthily: they know they should. But they don’t want to, really. Doing such things becomes a chore, a necessity, an aggravation, and usually, a non-starter. With me and reading it was similar: I just didn’t do it. Even reading King’s book took thirteen days because there were several in those almost two weeks that I just didn’t want to pick up the book. Persevere I did and finish I did.

Reading On Writing turned into a journey I needed to take. I had no idea what the book was going to say, nor did I expect the emotional impact it has had on my psyche. King talks about his life of writing, which includes his eventual sobriety and concludes with a life-threatening accident. I knew of neither. Look, the rest of King’s compendium really isn’t my thing and I knew almost nothing about him personally, but I picked up On Writing on a whim because I knew he was a good, established author. I figured something he had to say could be useful.

King’s advice was more than helpful: it was life-changing. Not least will be if I can read again because it was permissive. I know pretty much what King said already: eliminate adverbs, read plenty, write regularly, and so on, but the simple way in which he presented his advice, and life story, said to me that I can do those things, too. He doesn’t pretend to be some great writer, as opposed to a best-selling author, and he doesn’t stand on pretense. He is, and he invited me to be as well. Read what I like to read; write what I like to write (minus a few adverbs). And no worries about the rest.

Sometimes we all need the permission to do what we already know to do. Permission can take us from inaction to action. As kids we all wanted to do things, but it wasn’t until a parent or other authority gave us permission that we actually went out to do the thing (usually). I think Stephen King gave me permission to read, as weird as that sounds. I didn’t pick up his book asking for that, but late-90’s King communicated permission anyway.

I have a large backlog of books to read, including the Lord of the Rings. (Anyone reading right now knows that Lord of the Rings is among my favorite reads, which is to say, I’ve read it.) I set out to read Tolkien’s masterpiece once a year. That dream died when reading died. Now I just might try again. Autumn is the time of year I usually crack open Tolkien, in honor of Bilbo’s September birthday, and I think this year I will do the same. I have textbooks to read, and other reading on my horizon, but Lord of the Rings will be read!

I have a new purpose in reading. Enjoyment, of course, but to learn as well. Learn how other writers write. Learn how to craft wonder, intrigue, suspense, or put forth knowledge. I never read with that in mind before, but King told me to read with my eyes open, to note what other writers do and why and to emulate. I will do my best. After all, hand in hand with reading is writing. Ever since I first started reading thirty some years ago, I have wanted to recreate the experience I had in pages for someone else. If I am going to be a good writer, I must as well be a good reader.

I feel reborn, relieved, and reinvigorated. Light and full of light. Hyperbolic as well. I’ll take it all. I’ve not felt this way in a long time. A good book will do that for me, but I’ve forgotten the feeling. All that I had included dim memory and stale knowledge. Now I’ve got first hand experience once more! It feels good. Plus, life is short and if reading and writing get me through the pain of it all, so much the better. It did when I was a teenager, starting a mental health decline, but like so many things, I’d forgotten what billions know: reading is a pathway: to betterment, to amusement, to knowledge, and to joy. Yes, to escape as well. Who doesn’t need escape from time to time?

I’ve finished On Writing. But I’ve not finished writing, in fact where I’ve been precocious before, I plan to be prolific now. I’ve not finished reading, either. Where I may have been voracious before, I now plan to be insatiable. As author George McFly once said, “Like I’ve always told you, you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything!” I still contend with mental illness, life, and a host of adversity, but anything can be accomplished, and I’ve put my mind to overcoming!

What is free time? Some people might say that it is time without anything assigned to it, that one is “free” to use it as they wish. I suppose that definition works well enough. In between work, chores, sleep, bodily care, and scheduled events lies this elusive “free time”. How do you use yours?

I don’t quite know what to do with my free time. I have many options, but I don’t always feel “free” to choose most of them. And I don’t quite know why this is. I have written before on this blog about being paralyzed by choice, a sort of executive dysfunction I endure from time to time, but I don’t always think that is to blame.

Take reading for example. I used to love to read, and would do so voraciously. Now it takes extraordinary effort for me to read. I have bookshelves full of books I would love to read, but any time that is free to me, I don’t find myself choosing to read. Instead, I end up playing Scrabble on my iPad or watching baseball, or, which is psychologically worse for me, just…sitting there. I rather hate the choosing to do nothing, actually. I feel terrible for having wasted the time, and not having accomplished anything, reading or otherwise.

I should mention that it isn’t always a conscious choice. I sit down in the evening, usually when my free time occurs, and think “I’ll just play one game of Scrabble, and then move on” but I also have this thing where I hate losing, so if I lose, I play until I win.

Wait…

Having just written that, and thought about it, that sounds like gambling. I don’t wager anything on these games and nothing is risked, but the high I get from winning may be no different. This just took a left turn. Hmm.

…

Still thinking here. Bear with me a moment…

If playing Scrabble is like gambling, where I am chasing a high, and it is interfering with what I may ordinarily do, then maybe I need to quit playing Scrabble altogether. Maybe you figured that out already and have been laughing at me, but I’ve just now worked this out.

I have been puzzling over how to chose to do other things, and now it is a little silly to me that the solution may have been that obvious all along, but let me continue with my original thought and see if that leads down the same path. Scrabble. Playing until I win sometimes takes the next game, sometimes ten (I am fairly evenly matched with the Advanced computer I play against, so winning isn’t ever guaranteed). By the time I finish with Scrabble, I am out of sorts, sometimes frustrated, and more mentally drained than I was when I began.

The negative momentum is strong at that point, and I don’t often get off my butt and start something else. That is where I end up sitting and doing nothing or turning on a baseball game. And then I feel I have wasted the evening. So yeah, maybe Scrabble does need to go. Look, I’ve been playing Scrabble because I am afraid of losing my mind. No, really, that has been my rationale! I read that doing crosswords could stave off dementia and other age-related mental decline, and I figured maybe Scrabble against a sufficiently advanced computer would do the same thing (don’t know about that, actually) so I played Scrabble. But it has become, apparently, a sort of addiction.

Back to free time, then. I have thought before about actually scheduling my free time so that I do what I want to do. I think I even wrote about that a while back on this blog: Tuesdays for podcasts and Wednesdays for reading, that sort of thing. I never actually did it, because doesn’t that defeat the purpose of free time? I also get weary thinking about being forced to do a thing, as if maybe that would rob the joy I receive from doing something.

I feel like I am rambling at this point, but also maybe getting somewhere. I read something the other day about being intentional and allotting time for things during free time, which kinda brought all this up in my mind. I think perhaps I do need to, perhaps loosely, schedule what I want to do. Or give myself permission to do whatever I want to do, whether reading or watching baseball or something else.

The other angle to this is the cult of achieving. I have been inculcated with the idea that a product must result from an activity, else it is wasted or frivolous. Sure, reading results in knowledge or pleasure, but I’ve felt it must be something more tangible. Example: I mess around with my action figures, but it only “counts” if I take a picture and post it to social media. Reading hasn’t felt like it counted because it was only for me. Which, again, now that I type that sounds like an absurd thing to say.

Absurd or not, the feeling is valid. I haven’t felt that I can do things just for me because the end achievement was rarely visible to others. And there we have it! I have been living life in the shadow of how it appeared to others. I know in my mind that a life spent listening to bird song and tending to flowers is not a life wasted. It is only this damnable capitalistic society that says only products are valuable, but that is bullshit. And I do know that. But it is so hard for me to resist that ingrained ideology.

I want to break free! I want to use my free time for me, after all, isn’t that why it exists? I will try this thought on for size: time for me isn’t wasted, in fact, it is the most valuable thing there is. Time for me rejuvenates me, enriches me, and adds immeasurable value to my life for me. And that powerful thought is hacking its way through my intellectual thicket.

Where have I come to, then?

1) no more Scrabble!

2) loosely scheduling free time is ok!

3) things done just for myself are valid!

I feel liberated! I have the ability to choose what to do in my free time! It amazes me how well writing works as a tool to work through a problem I have been having for a long time. I feel ashamed that it has taken this long to find my answer, but so glad that I may have one at last. We will see how well this works to break through the fog and indecision paralysis, but for now I am excited!

I began by asking what you do in your free time. I suppose I’ll end by asking: what will I do in my free time?

Trigger warning: divorce.

In the Marvel television show Wandavision, the facsimile of the android Vision confronts Wanda about her burgeoning rage, and the grief that underlies her rage. He asks: “what is grief, but love persevering?”. Wanda is facing the loss of her parents, as a child, the loss of her brother in the recent war against Ultron, and the loss of her imaginary children in the context of the show. With so much loss, it is no wonder she was turning to rage as a means to insulate herself from the pain of the losses. I know the feeling.

Four days ago I celebrated my fourth wedding anniversary for the second time. That is, a second fourth wedding anniversary. My first fourth anniversary was hardly a celebration as it was mere months away from seeing my divorce finalized. That was a hard blow to absorb. I was not divorced by my choice; I would have rather worked on the marriage and rebuilt it as necessary, but that didn’t happen. Ten years on from that marriage ending, I am still dealing with that loss.

I thought I was over it, past it, done with feeling the pain of that loss. But then I saw, quite by accident, a photo of my ex on a friend’s social media account. There she smiled, alive and well, and quite divorced from me and my life. And it hit me like a sucker punch to the back of the head. All the pain, the loss, and yes, the rage, of the divorce came racing back. It was physical, visceral, and quite overwhelming for a few minutes. Thankfully, I now have tools and equipment to deal with such emotionality where before I did not. I was able to center myself, breathe, and refocus. But it still hurt.

In my grief renewed, I remembered the love that perseveres. The love I once held for my former wife, the love we shared for all too brief a time, and the love of the togetherness. All of that is gone now, practically speaking, but some must persevere. For why else would I feel such grief ten years later? I realize as well that grief is never-ending. Sure, we can bury it, ignore it, compartmentalize it, and think we have moved past it, but when it charges back into our hearts? It is then we know the pain of loss never fully left.

I don’t think severe mental or emotional pain ever really leaves. And I think, too, that we as humans would lack something without it. Humans are social creatures, this we know, and part of that society is forming connections, relationships, and partnerships. Beyond marriages, we have families, friends, co-workers, and acquaintances. All of these liaisons inform and build who we are throughout our life, and when one of those connections ends, brief or long-lasting, significant or ethereal, there is a loss. And we grieve that loss. For something like an acquaintance, it may barely register. But for a life-partner or a family member, it usually lingers. That love perseveres the rest of our lives.

I have a life-partner once again, and it is with her I celebrated the second-fourth anniversary. I share love with her, and I am thankful for her presence. She enriches me so much in so many ways, and I trust I do the same for her. Her love cannot, and does not, diminish what I had for my ex, nor does the enduring love for my ex shade my current love. Love, quite simply, doesn’t work that way. It is not a zero-sum game. Love grows as we grow, and encompasses much. This is why a new wife’s love cannot replace what was before, and neither can an old flame extinguish a new. Love is to be shared and that never ends.

This is also why it hurts in perpetuity when a love is no longer shared, either through death or legal separation. Because one party holds an echo of that love but it can never again be reflected. Love stretches into what is now a void, unheard. Love perseveres, hence: grief. So what do I do? I practice my coping techniques, and I continue to move forward with my life. I don’t, and didn’t, wallow in my grief renewed, nor did I begrudge it its place. I felt it, observed it, and continued. I do the same whether it is a reminder of my ex, or of my beloved grandparents who are no longer with me, or even of friends who have passed beyond my daily reach.

Whoever wrote that line for Paul Bettany to voice as Vision evidences wisdom. I am not sure I would have expressed it that way, and that is the simple brilliance: it is a quiet phrase, but one that holds so much breadth. That’s why I love good storytelling, incidentally. A good story speaks so much truth into my existence, and guides me to reframe what I feel in new ways and gives novel paths to experience those feelings. Everything builds on what came before to construct what is and provide scaffolding for what will be.

Why enumerate all this? This, too, is a way I process grief: through words and sharing of experience. The Bible has a saying: “rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn” and I think that is true, valuable, and proper. As social creatures, our emotions are to be shared as much as our resources and company. By presenting my grief, and insights, I can build a community with you who reads, because we are both human, and therefore share a commonality of experience. I help you, and you help me: that is humanity. We mourn together, this love lost, and we also rejoice in my new found love of four years now. Where one withered and died, the other is growing and thriving. So thank you for sharing my cries and my smiles. We are in this together, and that is a wonderful thought.