2018- a different one to be sure...

It was New Year's Day 2018 and I was sitting in a 4th floor apartment a stone's throw from the Vatican.

New Year's Eve fireworks over the Tiber in view of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome

After 3 years of saying we were coming to visit my lovely friend Laurie we finally made it happen.

It was a weird experience being completely away from "the usual" on New Year's Day.

No shop to keep. No hosting our annual neighborhood football bowl games party. No kids back to school on January 2nd.

Family Portrait at the Colosseum 

 Weird but good. No, phenomenal. To do something extravagant and ephemeral is radical for me.

I have always been a planner. Ultra thrifty "just in case". Structured so I can plan for the future. Structure is the way I make sense of the turmoil around me.

The Maddening, yet well behaved, Crowd enroute to the Sistine Chapel

 As I reach a solid middle age though I am finally forced to acknowledge I can't control the universe.

There has been a huge gap between blog posts as I have been caught up in change. Change that I can't control.

Amalfi Coast - even on a rainy grey day the water was spectacular

 My radical changes included vacating my brick and mortar shop, selling my home of 20+ years, doubling down on my art, dealing with loved ones health scares, watching my kids graduate, and gaining weight while panicking over the tumultuous news cycles.

Trodding the ancient streets of Pompeii 

 I went into 2018 vowing to strip things down to the essentials and not get caught up in the "what ifs". I had NO idea how hard that would be to do as I am so competent at making "what ifs" concrete.  When one has less to "do" one must concern oneself with just "being".  This is hard for me.

Strolling the porticos of the Baths of Diolectin

 I miss writing. But I wasn't writing because I felt I had nothing positive to say. You know, the old "if you don't have something nice to say- don't say anything."  There has been a LOT of things not good happening since my last post but also amazing things also. I am over letting outside forces steal my joy. So I begin again.