Winter Blues

It’s winter again, and I feel just as useless as I did last winter, at least in the writing department. In fact, I think it’s been well over a year since I’ve written a single thing (which is why I’ve closed the subscription section of my site for now). Here are some things about the past year, though:

1. I moved! Esquire and I moved back to my hometown, a smaller city than the one I’ve lived in for the past decade. There’s not as much to do here, although I wasn’t doing very much during the pandemic anyways. During the summer, I took care of the lovely garden, and now in winter I get to sit by the lovely fire. One of our cats hates the cold, it turns out, and has never been as cuddly.

2. We had a wedding! I do not recommend it, honestly. It was very stressful, as it happened the same week that the news about Delta broke. Everyone was vaccinated, but a member of my bridal party tested positive the day before the wedding. We almost canceled, but ended up moving it outdoors instead. My mom was a nightmare to the vendors I hired. I truly wish we’d left it at our elopement. The only good thing was I got to see my sister for the first time in two years, and she is a TREASURE. That, and no one else got COVID from the wedding.

3. We also had a memorial for my grandparents, at the beach where they lived during my childhood and where we had the wedding. They took their own lives in spring of 2020, right at the beginning of the pandemic. I can’t stop thinking about their final days, of how they might have decided it was time, of them going in solidarity, despite their differences. The wedding was horrendous, but the memorial, where the whole family stood shrouded in mist at the ocean’s edge and tossed their ashes into the waves–I think that was worth it.

4. I left my comfortable job where I had a team I loved and supervisors who gave me great feedback about my work and started a new one where I am on the verge of a panic attack all the time. I never get any real feedback from my boss aside from the occasional “You’re doing great!”, and the clients constantly email me to complain about things I can’t control. As someone who thrives on accountability, this is something of a nightmare. At least my colleagues have become a lot more friendly to me recently. I’ve mostly forgotten how to socialize, so this is a big step.

So anyway, that’s what I’ve been up to, instead of writing. I’ll get back to it one of these days, as soon as I’ve finished writing thank-you notes from the wedding and unpacking those last four boxes from the move.