Accidental Summer Hiatus

Oops. I guess I accidentally forgot to get into the habit of updating you all through out the summer. There were things that I should have told you, things that I could have told you and things that frankly are private (but I would have shared). Some of the things that fall into those categories were actually pretty big life events. Most were just the minutia of a summer that passed much too quickly. I would have shared the tale of my grandmother’s passing, leaving me with one grandparent and how that makes me feel, particularly my own mortality. I guess I would talk more about that, how my world has started to shrink a little bit now. I guess I’m in the middle of my life, past my prime and it was time. But it’s noticeable as people become engrossed in their own lives with the kids and their own communities that you’d lose touch with some but it seems to have happened slowly and now I’m just realizing that my circle is condensing rather than growing. That realization came in conjunction with the first family holiday I’ve had in over a decade. I attended a pair of family reunions in a two week span that were both well enjoyed. Basically I planted my heavy duty lawn chair in the direct sun, put on a sleeveless shirt and drank beer out of my cooler that was sitting beside me until it was time to eat, then continued. I could elaborate on that for at least a post, just that! I could tell you about my discovery of the “otherhood” and how that made me feel. What it means to me that others are in the same struggle as I am trying to dwell within the alternative lifestyle that they’ve chosen. I could have talked about work and having a team of all girls and how that worked out for me. How it was different but the same, what challenges it provided to me and how it made me think a little differently. Or how I’ve got one left and what it’s like to work closely with a female for the first time in a decade. How it’s changing me, bringing me closer to the person I was in the middle of the last decade rather than the no-time robot monster I’ve slowly become. Or how my senior leadership literally sold us out, selling the whole company to Bayer. How changing employers hasn’t sunk in but now they are beginning to impose their will and how the changes are hitting me. Those are just a few of the things that I could have dug into, and still might. As you know, I use this as my private diary so I might explore my feelings in these areas over the next while. Or I might completely forget to take time off and just ignore this for a few months. I don’t know what I’m doing with my life anymore. Stay tuned to see if anything coherent gels together either here or in my reality.