From cutting paper to walking to driving to flying; the way you are facing in the short term determines your arrival in the long term. This is why today, tomorrow and the day after, I dedicate myself to stepping forward. finding the next project, goal and horizon. The last two months have taken a lot from me and the challenge is nowhere near over. I can scent it on the wind. However, today I took a course on web design. I received notification that I have been granted a scholarship to a course on building inclusive worlds in fiction. I agreed to take a short term part time job. I set up a green screen.

This is going to be a hard post to write. It will likely be a hard post to read. I hope that it is useful to us both.

I have been reading more and more people I care about trying to contain the hurt that they are feeling now. 2020 has taken so much from us. The last four years have been a nightmare of loss. The decade has been trying. Everything since 2001 has been a decline from a simpler time. So on and so on: the attempts to put brackets around calamity and loss seem to be universal.

Bad things happen. The universe tends towards decay. Loss is inevitable. It is the nature of having something that one day you will likely be without it. I think the important thing right now is not to allow yourself to put brackets into your life before you’ve finished the set. We tell ourselves that next year will be better or that things will go back to normal once there is a vaccine for the pandemic and a new president.

These things may be true but they are not given and they are not in our control. Our part in such things is small and we can reach only that which is within our grasp. Tomorrow is in your reach. Next week, next month the next deadline and the next piece of work are things you can reach, touch, influence and control. If you set your course for a better long term, by necessity that must begin by pointing your course in the short term.

The balance of today will be hard for me. I cannot get into it right here and right now but I know that something very dear to me is about to change deeply. I am standing on the sea wall and I see the wave coming. I write this in hopes that when I am wet and shivering I will remember that the next step is ahead of me. I write this in hopes that you too, can walk with me.

Put your brackets in the past.