It’s January 2013, and I’d been blogging only 2 1/2 months. The year changed, the days were lonely, Autumn had died, making way for winter. In those dark days after Tim, I cocooned, awaiting whatever the spring had in store.

Maybe, in a way, his death symbolizes to me now a kind of time out of time. Days trapped on my own in that paradise, like some snow globe. In a way, I guess there is a certain division, before Tim and after.

The after was a confusing path where I often had no idea where I was going; except for forward.

Trying to find some inspiration for this NaBloPoMo, and I came upon a photo I took just after I’d bought that journal, a new pen, and this wifi keyboard and mouse I have to use since the tablet one was fried. It was my gift to myself. I started blogging to pass the lonely days, but I continued because it had become a whole lot more.

It was this community, a therapist, and it gave me a means to for the first time marry my two loves – writing & photography.

Well, last week I finished that journal and went out to the Dollarama and bought a new one. It has been four years now on this path to wherever, and that tea towel in the wind is maybe, finally, going to venture forth into the real world. Take some of those photographs and have them in a gallery.

Can you imagine? So BealArt guy has been pestering me about this since we met. Says I have such beautiful images, and why have I not done something with them? I won’t let this go, as he has the means to make it so.

And then he looks at me with those intense gray eyes, challenging me to once and for all throw my hat into the ring.

And why not?

The things in that picture represent a real turning point.

So, on a wintery day I began to put my ‘stuff’ together. I grieved, I wrote, I wept and wandered through all the stories I had collected, to what end? I knew not, and it didn’t matter. I decided I just need to tap, tap away on that shiny new keyboard, come what may.

This is my first NaBloPoMo, as in the past that sort of commitment seemed daunting. Well, here I am, DAY 5…wootwoot….yeah me.

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