A good week – busy, and good

Last week was a good one, I have to say. I took a break from social media for a while and read some books, for once. I also spent a fair amount of time taking care of business around the house. Cleaning up leftover mess from months gone by. Fixing up outside, taking care of my lawn, getting myself ready to tackle the garage and clean that out. I have a lot to do, and since it’s spring, it’s time to jump into action.

Or just get moving.

I also reconnected with some old childhood friends of mine, and it’s great to drift back into the sense I had when I was with them. When I was younger. When I didn’t fully understand my situation, what made me “tick”, etc. Relating to those people again with the perspectives I have about what I was dealing with, back then — a bunch of concussions that never got recognized or addressed, as well as the confusion and frustration and mixed-up state that came along with them — it’s much easier for me to relate to those people now, than it ever was, when I was a kid.

And that’s kind of cool. Because now I can cut myself a break, even forgive myself for being how I was. And I can cut those people a whole lot of slack for being “how they were”. Because in all honesty, I was so turned around, back then, I truly didn’t know how they were. I took a wild guess, and I guessed wrong.

But that’s all behind me. Because I understand. And I can forgive myself for a whole lot of things, now that I understand what was behind it. I can actually have compassion for myself and the person I was, back then, as well as others. And that’s the best thing of all.

Compassion makes a difference.

It’s important — and not only for the past, but for the present and future, as well. With my changed perceptions, my updated perspective, I can be free to move forward in life with a different way of thinking about things. I’m no longer “the loser who couldn’t figure anything out”. I’m “the resourceful, persistent person who never quit trying”. I’m not the former “waste of space”. I had as much right to exist as the next person, and I learned to contribute as best I could.

And I’ve been thinking a lot about contribution, lately. How important it is to really help make the world a better place by our choices, our words, our actions. I’m not talking about being some pie-in-the-sky lightweight who’s always spouting some sort of inspirational stuff. I’m talking about making the hard choices to keep positive, even in the face of adversity — to appreciate just how much everybody is dealing with, each and every day, and help them get through it all by staying positive and constructive.

We all have our struggles. That much is clear. And for me, staying stuck in my own difficulties is a sure recipe for misery. For myself, and for others. But when I get out of my own head and focus on others and look for ways to help, everything changes. For them, and for me.

That’s another thing that’s made this past week particularly good. I’ve been focusing on others, putting myself in others’ shoes, thinking about them and their situation, and doing my best to be supportive, even if I have no idea what’s causing someone to do the things they’re doing. That makes work so much easier — not because the job we’re doing is any less complicated, but because it gets the people stuff in order, and when you build from there, everything else finds a way to work itself out.

Oh, one other thing I found that’s helping — laughing, instead of cursing. Even if I don’t feel like laughing, I’ve been training myself to let out a little laugh, when I get frustrated or everything is completely messed up. Make no mistake… there’s a lot of stuff I’m dealing with that’s messed up. And it’s definitely curse-worthy. But if I make myself laugh just a little bit, that changes how things feel. And it lifts my mood considerably.

So, that’s good.

I plan to keep doing it — just embrace the absurdity of it all.

And now to get into this week. It’s spring vacation for a lot of my colleagues, this week, so it will be quiet. I’ve heard rumblings of political maneuverings that might swoop in and move me from one group to the next. Whatever happens, I’ll make the best of it. Whatever… I need a quiet week to just chill and get some work done. This should do the job.

Or it won’t.

Either way, I can always laugh about it.

There’s that.

Onward…

How things change

Getting it all sorted out

I’m cleaning up my home office, getting rid of a whole lot of junk stuff I have collected over the years.

To be fair, it’s not actually “junk” — it’s just leftovers from years gone by, which are no longer needed. I used to need these things. Or, in some cases, I thought I was going to need them, but it turned out, I didn’t. Lots of scrap paper… lots of cardboard I used to use for packing, when I was sending things to people. Lots of old equipment that needs to go to “technology heaven”.

And look… there’s the coupon for $10 off my next $50 spent at the hardware store. It’s good for another 3 days. That will come in handy — especially if I actually make it to the hardware store this weekend. I should. I have a number of things I need to pick up, and my garage needs to be cleaned out for the impending fall. Right now, it’s got too much stuff — and junk — taking up the space that my car should fill.

I’m feeling a little frustrated, right now. A lot of what I’m finding is a reminder of how much I have had to let go of. Or all the things that I had such hopes for, and never managed to make happen. I was really convinced, for so many years, that I was going to make all these dreams come true. But I never reckoned with the reality of fatigue, confusion, frustrations, and the constant toll that TBI-related stress and distraction takes on a person, day after day after day.

A number of objects in my office are from my spouse, and looking at them all, seeing how many things I’ve been given, which don’t actually suit my personality… or seeing how many of them were given to me in good faith (which I never followed through on)… that’s a little depressing, too. It’s a little disconcerting to have so many reminders that your significant other has never really understood you — and probably never will.

Then again, who ever really understands anyone? And in the midst of the sorting, I find one reminder after another of our bond — birthday cards, Valentine’s Day cards, little notes left for me that say “I love you!”… that’s really what matters. Everything else seems a best guess to me, anyway.

And I realize I am at a significant juncture in my life. I’m finally at a place, where I can relax and settle into my work, because it suits me, all across the board. For decades, I was not committed to my “day job” other than as a way to make a living and pay for the expenses of everyday life. I wasn’t invested in the least. I mean, it was hard to feel invested about anything in technology, back when the Web was first starting up. Nobody knew how it was going to go, if it would last, if it was “a thing”. It took many years for that to be proven, and now it’s a given.

And now, after so many years of work and pioneering and opening the frontier, the world I helped to create — as one tiny cog in a massive machine that has an intelligence all its own — I finally feel invested in it all. Because I connected with a company that’s invested in me. It really is remarkable, after so many years of being treated like I’m disposable, expendable, interchangeable. Like I didn’t matter, and nobody cared. The people around me cared, sure, but at the management level, it was all too Darwinian and it wasn’t at all conducive to getting the best performance out of the people who were committed to doing the work.

They didn’t even seem to realize that we were committed to doing the work. They just treated us like we showed up each day to earn a paycheck, and that was it. Eventually, no matter how much more it may all mean to you, if you’re treated that way, day in and day out, you can end up slipping into that mindset, yourself.

What a waste.

And for years — decades, really — my life was driven by a profound need to be more than just a cog in the machine, a plug in a hole that would have leaked if it weren’t plugged. I spent so, so many hours trying to fill that void left by my day job, seeking with every fiber and ounce to actually express myself in a way that made me “me”. It was a constant struggle to prove my identity, to prove my worth, to know that I was more than what I was treated like, day in and day out.

I wanted more, I needed more. I had to have it.

So, I created it myself. I carved out a niche for myself in my own life with constant work, constant writing, constant creation. I volunteered. I got involved in groups. I had an active life outside work, and I crammed a whole lot of stuff into it.

And for years, that worked. It just felt normal and right and free. As long as I was free, that’s all that mattered to me.

But then I fell and hit my head. And the freedom went away. It just seemed to evaporate overnight, and everything that had felt smooth and sensical, just turned into mush. I lost my spark. I lost the joy. I lost the passion that comes from within — it was replaced by a manic stress response that was fueled by pure adrenaline that came from post-traumatic stress, life-and-death choices, a long series of bad decisions that either trashed or threatened to destroy so much that I had worked so hard for.

The energy and passion I’d had before, which was always accompanied by hope, was replaced by rage and fear and anxiety. On the surface, it looked like I was still engaged and energetic, but inside I was a tangled mass of nerves.

Big difference from before. My fuel was not hope, but desperation. Confusion. Frustration. And the need to have enough stress in my life to keep my attention focused on what was in front of me.

The last 10 years have been a chaotic blur. A blur, because everything has seemed to happen so fast – and yet so slowly – and chaotic, because I could not figure out what was going on inside my head and outside of it, too. So much confusion. So much dancing on the edge of disaster — often without realizing it. So many poor decisions, so many knee-jerk reactions that cost me so much. Since 2004, I had 11 different positions – more, if you count changing roles within organizations. That’s more than one job change a year – I hopped from one position the next four times in about a year, back in 2008, without knowing why. Part of it was just bad decision-making, part of it was anxiety, part of it was not being able to function and needing to “skip town” before people found out how incompetent I was at the job I’d signed up for.

In the meantime, there were the marital troubles, the money shortage, the creditors knocking down my door and blowing up my cell phone, the logistical troubles, the health problems and cognitive decline of my spouse… Yeah, it’s been a wild ride.

And looking around me at my office, I see so many relics of the years before 2004, when everything seemed so simple and straightforward, and I was content to be living as I was. Back when my spouse was still healthy and working. Back when I was good with where I was, and everything just progressed and unfolded without concern for the future. Back before everything started to fall apart.

I’m cleaning up, now. I’m getting rid of the old stuff that I no longer want or need. And I’m saving what I can still use. The post-it notes that were given to me at a past job, when the company changed its branding and they had all these extra supplies to get rid of. The paper clips and butterfly clips. The pens I can still use. The notes I made, some time ago, about ideas that still interest me. Much of this I can still use.

But in a very different frame of mind. A relaxed frame of mind. A state of mind that makes it possible for me to settle in and concentrate — and not worry constantly about the outcome. A frame of mind that  have not had in so many years. It’s more than relaxed. It’s at ease.

Finally, I can settle in and just enjoy my life again.

Not that things are completely event-less. Lately, there have been unfortunate losses in my family, a bunch of my friends lost their jobs, and things are not hunky-dory, all across the board. But my frame of mind is very different, now. And while I don’t much care for the tragedy, I can handle it without going off the deep end. I can walk through the crises without letting them wreck me, too. Whatever happens now, I feel as though I’m up to the challenge.

I know how to think things through.

I know how to break things down and take my time and work through them from start to finish.

I used to have that ability, years ago, then it went away. Now, ten years later, it’s back.

And that makes all the difference.

So, the day is waiting.

Onward.

Getting my house in order

The pieces will fit together, if I pick and choose and let some things go.

Just got up from my afternoon nap. I had an early start today, waking up at 4 and working for a bit, before helping my spouse and some friends get out the door to go to a business event they are attending. Lots of movement, lots of activity, lots of coordination, lots of details to remember for things that had to be remembered.

After they got on the road, I took the opportunity to do some yard work. I usually can’t start yard work till late afternoon, because my spouse usually sleeps till 2 p.m., and they don’t much care for waking to the sound of a lawn mower or leaf blower. So, I had some freedom to just work, and I got a lot cleaned up. Then I had some lunch and ran some more errands, came back home, took a long, hot shower, and collapsed for almost 2 hours. I could have slept longer, but I decided against it. The days are getting so short, and I have a lot I want to be doing with myself, while there are still daylight hours.

Anyway, it’s better if I don’t sleep too long – I don’t want to hose my ability to get to sleep tonight. I’ve been waking up at 5 a.m. regularly, so the sooner I can get to bed at night, the better. Obviously.

Now I’m figuring out what I’m going to have for dinner. I think I’ll make myself some lamb, which my spouse doesn’t like, but I love. Times like these, when I’m flying solo, are perfect for me to eat foods I can’t normally have when I’m cooking for us both.

The one challenge with the lamb is that I’ll have to prep and cook it. I toyed with the idea of subsisting on crackers and caramelized onion goat cheese spread, which is like a crazy drug to me, for some reason. But I really need some protein. I worked a lot today, and I’m sure I’m going to be sore tomorrow. So, I need to get some meat in me.

So, lamb it is. I won’t have to hover over the stove, just prep it, put it in a pan on the stove, and set the timer. And get some more work done in the meantime.

I’ve got a handful of things I want to do with myself in the next couple of days — I’ve already done one of the big things: yard work. I also need to reconstruct my study, which I now realize has to be re-stocked with certain books I had taken away a couple of years back. I have a lot of books on my bookshelves which do not reflect where I’m at these days, or where I’m going. I’ve been back and forth about my next steps and where I want to go with my career, etc., and I’ve been clinging like crazy to the technical angle, like my life depends on it.

News flash – it doesn’t.  The technical angle is something I recognize and remember loving. But my career has moved on — and I need to just admit it and accept that. In fact, my career is very much in flux, right now, with nothing absolutely certain about where I’m going. The only thing certain, is that it’s in flux and it’s headed in some new direction that I still have to figure out. I have an idea about where that direction is — and if I can stop preventing that from happening with back-pedaling to the technical stuff every other day, so much the better.

Seriously. It’s like I have amnesia. I need to make a sign for myself

YOU ARE NOT A TECHNICAL WORKER BEE ANYMORE

And be done with it.

I guess I just get nervous and try to head back into the arenas where I used to feel safe and secure. The thing is, I felt safe and secure, because I knew what I was doing. That’s not the case, anymore.

Part of the issue is that I’m being contacted by old friends and colleagues who “knew me when” — before my fall, before my life fell apart, before I stopped being able to pick up new things at a moment’s notice and run with it. The inner workings of my brain are so very different, now, and none of them saw me go through that flame-out over the past 7 years. For all they know, I am still the technical whiz kid they used to know.

But I know better.

I guess I need to do a better job, too, of communicating to folks what my new life is. It’s kind of embarrassing for me to “admit” that I’m not highly technical anymore. And it’s also bothering me a good deal. But that’s the fact of the matter. It’s just how things are, now. Time to move on.

This is a theme in my life, these days — moving on. Getting my act together and just moving along. There’s a fair amount of grief that is going with this, because I’m having to let go of things that used to be such a big part of my life and my outlook. It’s like I have to stop hanging onto parts of me and my life that died years ago, but I have still been pretending exist. I’m kind of like one of those people who can’t let go of a beloved pet, so I keep their ashes — or their stuffed body — up on a mantle, so I think that part of them is still with me.

It’s kind of creepy, actually, now that I think of it.

Yeah, it’s time to get my house in order and let go of things. Just let ’em go and move along. Gid-along little do-gie and all that.

Because when I think about it, I have a bright and shining future ahead of me that’s well outside the bounds of where I used to function. I got into technology as a reaction to hating my old effing job that I had back in 1995, and it’s been good to me. But the changes over the years have not been positive and the job market has shifted away from me in a very big way. I need to move along in this new direction I’ve identified — do some good work, make some good progress, and let my life transform itself.

Hanging onto the past, no matter how well it once treated me, is no good for my future.

So, tonight after I have my lamb dinner, I’ll move the old books out of my study and make room for the new. It’s gonna be a whole new day.

Onward.

 

The only good reason to look back

The only time you should ever look back,
is to see how far you’ve come

An old college friend messaged me this morning to catch up. It was good to hear from them, and we had a good — but brief — chat. They were one of my closest friends in college, and they saw me go through an awful lot, thanks to my heavy drinking. They tried to reach out to me to help, a number of times, but I was pretty much of a goner, in those days.

It would be easy to say it was just the drinking, but it was so much more. I really believe that the multiple concussions I had in high school had a lot to do with my attitude problems and inability to keep focused and clear about my priorities. I was not accustomed to making good decisions about the people I hung around with — in high school, I faded to the background, when the after-effects of several concussions and a whole lot of rough-housing and heavy partying took over my life.

So, by the time I got to college and I was away from the structures and restrictions of my youth, I was ready to just “let go” — and that’s exactly what I did. It only took me a year to get into real trouble, and this college friend of mine has been saying repeatedly over the past year or so that we’ve been back in touch, that they wish they had been a better friend to me. I am assuming that means they thought they could somehow save me from myself and my inner demons. Or maybe at least advocate for me better, when the police got involved, and a nasty-ass judge who favored local townspeople over ne’er-do-well college kids started making life difficult for me.

Looking back, I don’t think that there’s much of anything they could have done for me. I had too much I needed to work through, and I transferred out of that school after two years there. The next stop I made was a better solution, academically, but again I got into trouble — drinking too much, falling down drunk a lot, doing more of the same as I was before, but this time, much worse. And I isolated like crazy, which didn’t help me any.

I wonder sometimes… if I had been able to reach out for help earlier, if I had allowed others to help me (instead of pushing them away like I did), would things have turned out differently for me? It is really hard to say. Even if they had been able to be a friend to me, I doubt I could have let it all in. I was too much at odds with myself and everyone/everything around me, to really allow much to penetrate this hard head of mine. Combining a succession of mild traumatic brain injuries with drinking, was a really bad idea, but — like so many others — I did it. And it did me no good. At. All.

In any case, it’s all water under the bridge, and the experiences I have had, have made me who I am. The best reason to look back on all of it, is to see how far I have truly come, to look back on the flood waters and rapids I have navigated in my past and to be genuinely grateful that I am alive today. It didn’t have to turn out that way. I have found myself in the midst of human traffickers, drug dealers, violent criminals, and all manner of thieves, cheats, and liars, over the course of my life. The fact that I am living a good life today, with a marriage of 20+ years and a home and a favorable employment situation, is really something to celebrate, rather than regret because it’s not something else.

I’ve been grappling with that a lot, lately — regret over my past, and things not turning out better than they did. So many of my professional peers, including folks 10-15 years younger than me — are farther along and doing more with their lives. They have much better prospects than I, or so it seems. Job-wise, I do feel like I’ve been held back by my situation… until I really think about it and realize how other people with the same type of history as I are living.

I have friends who have been through similar circumstances to my own, and none of them are even close to the quality of life I have. They came from similar circumstances, but they made different choices, and now — as far as I can tell — they are in decline, while I am on the ascent. I don’t want to get caught up in making anyone better or worse than anyone else, because who can tell what is in the mind and heart of another. And yet I can’t help comparing my situation to others’.

I guess that means I’m human.

Anyway, it’s fall, and that means it’s a time of reflection and recapping the past year. I always feel like this is the end of the year, with Halloween being a sort of turning point leading into the new year. It’s a cellular thing, I guess. Growing up in farm country, Halloween was the time when everything was ready to be cut down and turned over, and the nights were obviously longer than ever, so it really felt like The End. Thanksgiving, to me, feels like the start of the year, with a kickoff celebration of what’s to come.  This time of year, with the falling leaves and shortening days, prompts me to look back on the past months to do a kind of inventory of where I’ve been and how far I’ve progressed.

I have to say, for all the challenges of the past 12 months, I have made significant progress. I’ve managed to extricate my mind from the hold of my current employer, and I have managed to stick it out long enough to not look like a flake, by leaving my employer in two years’ time. I have made some real progress in my work, achieving some pretty impressive feats – even if the cost was high. I’ve also had some real revelations about myself and where I want to fit in the world, and I’ve made some real strides with regard to my eating and exercising. I’ve become more active — all across the board — and that’s a really good thing.

With regard to the part I want to play in the world, after re-connecting with some old friends and co-workers, I’ve realized that I really did get sidetracked by the whole career thing. For the past three years, I’ve been living under the belief that by applying myself and working hard and showing real results and good progress and transforming the way my job is done, I can be a valued team player who has real career prospects. The first year in my job, that was pretty much true. The thing that held me back, was me. I didn’t put myself forward enough and I didn’t leverage the connections I had, to move forward. For the past two years, my prospects have shrunk and shriveled, and now it’s pretty clear that no matter how well I do my job, if I don’t say the right things to the right people at the right time, I’ll be perpetually marginalized and relegated to the “average 80%” pool of employees at this mega-corporation. Just a number.

Looking back, there’s part of me that regrets not pushing harder for the career advancement thing. But with a week’s vacation behind me, I realize now that it would not have worked, because that’s just not how I want to organize my life. I don’t want to be a high-flying hot-shot at work, to the point where it takes over my life and is my identity. I don’t want to give myself 100% to that path, because there is so much else I want to do with myself, and there is so much else I need to experience, beyond the realm of that whole career business.

If I had wanted to push for promotions and move up in the corporate world, I would have done it. If I had wanted to advance professionally and take it all to the next level, I would have gotten it done. But the fact of the matter is, I am deeply distrustful of that whole world, and more than anything, I want freedom and balance and the ability to move at will about the world. I’m more interested in questions, than answers, and I want to be free from any licensing agency or professional association that could impose its standards on me and shut down my voice. I would much rather hold down a day job for the structure and society, and then be free to do my own thing in my own hours.

And given that for the past three years, I’ve been in a job that has required me to be available pretty much anytime, any day, moving back to a 9-to-5 job will probably feel like a breeze. It will give me time to research TBI and to write. It will give me time to build out the library of resources I’m compiling for mild TBI understanding and recovery. It will give me time to do what I really want to do —  freely read and write and think and talk the way I see fit and am drawn to do, without the intrusion of those who crave power and influence in the world.

And that, to me, is progress. Realizing and remembering – yet again – where I am going, and why… that’s the best sign of growth and strength that I could ever get.

Looking back, there are many things that could have gone differently and could have been “better”. There’s also a lot of stuff that could have turned out a whole lot worse. All in all, it’s been a wild ride — and here I am, on down the road, with a whole lot of experience under my belt, that makes it all worth it.

Way.

So, onward we go. Looking back to see how very far I’ve come. And yes, it is very, very far.

 

Do NOT try this at home

The road is long…

Yesterday someone arrived at this blog via the search  “hit head again make memories restore”

Please. Do NOT do this! It only works in movies and comic books, and they will say anything for a buck. Think of all the cartoons about Wile E. Coyote surviving a dynamite blast. Or future superheroes surviving atomic blasts and other super-power inducing near-death experiences. Comic books and cartoons are not reliable sources of medical advice. Nor is Hollywood.

A second impact to an already injured brain can do even more damage than the first. You think your memory is bad now… Another injury can lead to second-impact syndrome, which is where the second brain trauma has even worse consequences than the first… possibilities: swelling… dramatic disability… death.

After you injure your brain, you need to rest it, to let it get itself back in order. During concussion, connections are broken, and also substances are released in the brain which impair/kill brain cells. If you don’t give yourself enough time to heal, the damage from a second impact can be devastating, even lethal. Some experts advise taking at least three months off to heal the brain. Others say one month will do. Once upon a time, people believed it could be shaken off with no consequence. The rash of suicides and premature deaths in professional contact sports tells us a different tale.

Even after you’ve had time to heal, another head injury tends to be worse than the one prior. Damage is cumulative (not very comforting to me, as I’ve had around 9 mTBIs in the course of my life), and each injury can bring with it a whole new slew of issues. I can attest to that.

Think of your brain as a network of highways through a vast wilderness. When some of the roads get torn up, and new roads get put in their place, they can end up going some roundabout routes that are less direct than the original connections. Also, you have to let the concrete and asphalt set before you can drive on it. And you have to let the paint dry, so you don’t end up tracking the stripes all over creation and end up with a lot of crossed signals.

These things take time. And hitting your head again will NOT restore memories. I wish Hollywood and comic books would quit telling us it will.

New theme for a new day

Time for a change. I’ve been at this blog, now, since November, 2008, and I haven’t had a different theme since I started (I think). I’ve put in links and what-not, added stuff on the sidebar, etc. But I haven’t really done much with the look of it.

I’m not sure how I’m going to like this new theme. It’s different, obviously. And when I switched from my other theme, apparently the bridge burned behind me, and I can’t get the old one back. The design is gone. The widgets I created are gone. A lesson in impermanence.

Oh, well. Nothing like total commitment to get me back on point.

Speaking of being back on point, I need to get myself back in the game, here. I had pulled out all the stops to get this project done, and pushed a lot of other projects to the side. Now it’s time to bring those other projects back, front and center. And it’s time to dig in and make some more progress.

It does get a little tiring, being constantly over-committed. But it keeps me on my toes. And it’s how everyone at work does things. Doesn’t leave much time for digesting what’s going on, unfortunately. But maybe that’s a good thing.

All I know is that I can easily get caught in a kind of vortex of analysis. Analysis paralysis. I get caught in a loop — fueled in part by anxiety about doing the wrong thing — and I can’t seem to make progress.

This is something I am actively working to change. I have way too much going on in my life to dally. Though sometimes it is nice to take some time away and just BE.

Being can come after doing, however. What I need most, is to get things off my plate and keep moving forward. Finish the things that matter. Table the things that don’t. And keep moving… giving myself time to rest and recuperate on a regular basis.

See, that’s the thing – rest and recuperation needs to be a regular part of my life, so I have the chance to build myself back up after I tear myself down. I can do a real job on myself at times, pushing as hard as I do. And I can do a job on everyone around me, as well. I need to step back on a regular basis, take a break, get some rest, and allow myself to catch up. Most of all, I need to fully appreciate just how much I’ve done and accomplished, from time to time, so I can sit back, relax, and take it all in.

Speaking of sitting back and relaxing, I need to make some significant changes in my living space. My home has gotten pretty cluttered with a lot of stuff, and we need to do some serious prioritizing and cleaning out. The basement long ago became a catch-all for things we didn’t want to deal with. And my home office is a hodge-podge collection of papers and books and ideas and projects from days gone by — things that are long gone and are no longer a regular part of my life, but for some reason I am hanging onto them.

No need for that. I can safely let those things go. All the old books about subjects that no longer interest me… why do I keep them? Because they remind me of a time when I was immersed in those topics and they meant a lot to me. It’s more for the memories… but those memories are taking up space and time and attention that I need to free up for new things.

A new life. A new day. A new theme.

This blog isn’t the only thing that’s changing. Other things need to change for me, as well. And so they shall.