It’s been a while. In the year or so since my mother passed away, so much of my life got put on hold. In a lot of ways I functioned fairly normally, but now that I’m on the other side of it, I can see that I really spent that first year in a mental fog. A lot of things that I had going for me kind of fell by the wayside, this blog included. Which was hard; I really loved writing this blog, loved meeting people in Mount Dora as well as those who were just interested in hearing more about this little town. But like so many other things lately, it was just one more task I didn’t have the energy to face.
The rule of thumb is that the grieving period takes about a year. Grief never truly leaves you, but I do think it really took that year to come to terms with what happened, and figure out a different kind of life, figuring out the things that still made me tick.
Knitting still makes me tick. Still doing a lot of that, even though the knitting store in town closed. If I win the lottery, I will open a yarn shop.
And writing. Writing still makes me tick, I’ve discovered lately. I was frankly kind of worried that I’d lost that forever in the bog of depression. But no. Here I am trying to figure out all the crap that’s changed on WordPress in the past year or so (so no pictures this time around: I think I can barely figure out how to input text!), and I’m back to work in earnest on my novel. I blogged about my 2009 experience with National Novel Writing Month, which I won largely in part thanks to One Flight Up and their carrot cake. I had written something very silly, that I just loved more and more, and 2010 was going to be the year I turned it into something. So much for that. But now the determination is back: 2011 will be the year.
I still love going downtown to write; one recent weekend I brought a blanket and spent a blissful little while in the sunshine in Donnelly Park. And when it’s too hot for coffee, there’s B Frozen Yogurt, one of those ubiquitous DIY yogurt places that seem to be popping up everywhere these days. I like this one because it’s independently owned, and the yogurt is SO GOOD. And no one seems to mind that I bring my netbook and hang out for a half-hour or so. They have a Wii in the back though, so I suspect that hanging out is encouraged.
And another, major thing that still makes me tick is living in Mount Dora. Seriously, this town rocks in so many ways, and I’m excited to keep telling you all the ways in which it rocks. For such a small town, lots of things change, so I suspect there will be a fair amount of things to tell.
So. Here I am.
