The Desert Time

I realized that it's been a long time since I wrote anything here. And at once felt guilty. And then felt completely annoyed at myself for feeling guilty. Things have been a little rough and it's not as though I've been traipsing around doing nothing - or doing lots of things other than writing. But I haven't been writing enough.

Then the other day, I started - what I hope will become some sort of series - of writings that are parts of what I'm just calling, "The Road." Because that's what this whole journey through being at a job that finally became untenable (to the point that it was affecting my physical health), to leaving that job, to being unemployed, to being on unemployment, to suddenly for the first time in my life not being able to get another job again (this has never really been a problem in the past). And now sitting here looking at our situation - that from any perspective looks pretty dire - and wondering, "how did we get here?" With our resumes, our education, our experience, our work ethic? How did we get here? How did we become the people about the fall off the edge of the cliff; the people falling through the cracks in the system that's supposed to help; the people that we never imagined that we'd be.

But The Road has been about far more than that. It has become the biggest spiritual journey of my life - and significant in the fact that it's the biggest spiritual journey that my husband and I have been on together. And the changes that are happening in our individual lives and our collective lives are the things that are so important. We've been through, what I would call some pretty significant struggles and challenges so far in our eighteen years together. We've had parent issues. Money issues. Custody issues. Health issues that became near death issues. But somehow, this one is different. And I don't want it to be "just another thing" I go through, or we go through. It's too important to be just something we survive.

So all of this is an out-of-the-blue preface to me deciding to add the pieces of The Road here. And maybe deciding to flesh it all out at some point and make a coherent story out of it.