Yes, it's been quite a while since I've written anything here. At first, I wasn't writing because I was trying to deal with all the changes and all of the work that needed to be done. But, after a while, not writing became a act of guilt. I think it's best akin to the sense you get if you haven't called a friend for a long time. You know that you want to, but, at the same time, you feel bad about it because there's just been so much that's happened and you don't know how to tell them and you can't explain why you haven't called before.
That's what this has been like. There's been so much that's happened and so much that I've wanted to say that I wasn't able to start. And, of course, each day just added another chalk mark to the tally of things I hadn't written about.
At one point, I was thinking about naming this one "Overcoming Guilt", but then I realized that it would put the wrong spin on it. I'm not overcoming guilt, because, at the bottom, there's nothing to be guilty about. I've been overwhelmed. And, as such, it's a perfectly natural instinct to pull back and put up as many defenses and as much protection as possible.
So there has been a lot that's happened. I'll write about some of it now and more in the days to come. In some ways, there's been so little that's changed on the "macroscopic" scale - my mother isn't coming back; my wife hasn't given birth yet; we still live in the same house.
But instead, on the micro- level, there's been, seemingly to me, dramatic changes - I finally sold the house that my mother lived in; I went through my late grandmother's things (knick-knacks, tchotchkes, etc.) and kept some, discarded others; we've been doing all the things that new parents do to get ready for the arrival of a baby; one of our cats was diagnosed with diabetes and we've been treating him, etc., etc.
In some ways, now that I think about it, that's probably a major self-realization. I hadn't really phrased it that way (even to myself) before this. When we all think about (or say) "Wow... Your life has really changed.", we think at the macro- level - the big changes... the life-altering changes. We don't really think about the day-to-day changes that, in many ways, wind up being even more life-altering. After all, that's just living. A macro- level change, though - that's significant.
Rather than go on and talk about any of the micro- changes, I think I'm actually going to end here. After all, a major revelation per day should be some sort of limit, lest I grow too big-headed at my own insightfulness. I'll just leave with the data point that, as of today, my wife is exactly 38 weeks pregnant. Some time within the next two weeks, it's likely that she'll be giving birth and I'll be welcoming a new life into the world and into my family. I think that's the best possible macro- level change that could happen to me right now.
Author: ben@tmk.com