Imagine if you will that it has been five years since I put words to paper in an attempt to explain life as I saw it through the lens of a military wife. So many moves, so many deployments, so many anecdotes that made some laugh and then cry, then maybe pee a little from doing both at the same time.
Then imagine if you will logging in one day to find all of your posts from that time gone, years of work, just gone. Pieces of yourself and your life out there somewhere floating in a literary purgatory. I died a little that day. Because my work was not just a reflection of me, but that time and what it was like to be living as a spouse with a husband in the desert. It was about my children, the funny and the poignant. At that moment it was as if a time capsule that I had labored over and loved had been obliterated.
I did not cry, strangely enough someone said, "well why didn't you?" Denial.
That's right, denial. I denied that I had been a writer or written anything with substance, of value that my words had mattered. It made it less painful to know that in my hubris and confidence that I had back nothing up, yes nothing was left. It was all in my original blog.
I called Blogspot and all its various tentacles of empowerment to be told, sorry. So I didn't write for a long time. Choosing instead to justify the loss and lack of writing with the coincidence of my husbands retirement from the military. After all it was a military wife's blog, what would I blog about now, retirement? Empty nest? Cooking? Grandmotherhood? Maybe.
But I believe that if you don't express who you are in some way whether it is through art, craftsmanship, writing, humor, that a story dies inside you when you die. To me that is an unforgivable crime, so now, I back things up. I write to please God first and if it pleases me and others in the process, then its a win. This blog has no theme no branding, its just a way for me to muse and track my life and some of the things that occur.
Did I mention my husband retired? Did I also mention we are together ALL THE TIME NOW? It's wonderful and awful. Those who are retired will nod sagely and tell me, "Preach, sister." It's a lifestyle that requires as much getting used to as their continued absence was and it has as many challenges. Many of our friends have not made it this far, choosing instead to part ways and end marriages, each for different reasons. So here we are in a new city, new jobs, new life and together, ALL THE TIME. We will figure it out as we always have, but maybe along the way 'll write about it just a little and about cooking and empty nest, being a grandparent, why I don't care about a thigh gap and how raising the last of my children may just kill me.
