Same-ish

Well, well, well... if it isn't this little blog I've neglected for the last 6 years.

I never intended to be gone this long. Although, I was never actually gone. I was here. I just didn't know what to say. There was nothing to say.

What can you say when your art and livelihood was your life and people on The Internet decided that anyone's decisions were fair game for criticism? Nothing.

It is hard to be creative when your world turned upside down and sharing honestly meant having The World's Worst In-Law (aka Internet Peasant Mob) hollering their "facts and science" about why you are wrong to feel the way you do.

So you retreat into yourself and think... perhaps this new world is just not meant for me.

I spoke with a new friend the other day, we remarked on how Instagram was a "softer" place some odd years ago. It was a place I felt like I could share vulnerable things like: my family, what credit card points we liked, how we managed on one income, and what places we liked to visit. It was the kind of place where I made online friends and had a public personal Instagram account.

Then it became... not soft. And I didn't want to share that anymore. There was no benefit of the doubt. There was no nuance. I like both of those things. So I backed away slowly. First, no hashtags... then the occasional post... then an update post... and then I just stopped.

Scott and I huddled close and focused on our family. We wanted to get our boys through their pre-teen years with as much stability as possible. With a recent layoff and cross-country move we wanted to focus on two things: Our kids and obtaining additional streams of income. (Sharing our life on The 2020 Internet was, sadly, incompatible with those things.)

For the last 6 years we have done just that.

I went to work. It was really hard at first. Everyone struggled. Everyone grieved the change. Eventually I stepped into my own talent and got into a really satisfying groove. (I've since retired to manage the two businesses we started in the interim.)

The kids went to a local private school they could walk to. We wanted them grounded in a community. They wore snow boots in the winter and saw elk on their morning "commute" in the fall. We met with teachers more times than I care to admit to get the boys acclimatized to their new environment. They adjusted eventually. At least one of them got honor roll at one point.

Scott has tried to put as much distance from The Layoff as he could through continuing education and seeking jobs that would foster growth. (He's at a company that uses "synergy" unironically.) He gave talks and networked. He replaced the transmission on our car and taught Oliver how to snowboard.

We started our own business. And then another one. I got a certificate from Harvard Business School. (The online one, OK. It is still cool!) We traveled. We did fast travel. Furious travel. Travel that we could squeeze into limited time off, but we sure as hell made it count.

I started seeing a therapist, then a psychiatrist. Now I have a whole mental health team behind me. My family says "Lex-a-pro" like how Super Mario says "Lets-a-go!". Scott and I walked a half marathon, then we participated in a marathon relay. We bought land... and then some more property. Charlie became a lifeguard.

Little by little our new life started to take shape. Is it what I had imagined when the first whispers of a new virus entered the news cycle? Absolutely not. Is it bad? Absolutely not. Can I still miss watching orcas with me cute little elementary aged boys and still be happy when my teenagers clomp around Costco on the weekends? Yes. Both can be true.

For now it feels like we are on the other end of a wild 6 years of rebuilding and transition. The Internet is not any better, but I am. The "travel influencers" are still problematic. Flights are stupidly expensive. Lounges are overcrowded. Cluster Fuss Travel was intended to be a bright spot to parents who wanted to travel in a realistic way: To see the world in the face of personal happy disruption. Now? Well, I suppose it is still the same-ish: To not become a bitter shell of yourself and still travel in the face of less fun disruption.