For the first time in over five months, I am seated in front of my beloved iMac. The place where I have written ninety percent of my posts since starting this newsletter/blog. Though I have three functioning laptops, this computer seems to contain all of my writing mojo (what little there is of it). Well, I’m not going to argue with the gods, spirits, daemons, or muses. I’ll write with this device if it helps me get back into the creating groove. Dumbo’s feather though it may be.
I am home after a long visit to Texas. My mother’s health is improving and she is getting stronger each day. Thank you for all of the thoughts, prayers, well-wishes, and kind words in emails and Twitter DMs over the last several months. It really meant a lot. Thank you.
I had a hard time keeping myself together during my time in Texas. I was lonely, depressed, and sad for long periods. I have become a homebody of the highest order. I need my things and routines in order to function at all. I missed Jennifer to the point of pain. I missed our home together. A home that is someone else’s now. During my time away, Jennifer had to move all of our things to a new apartment. She had to move all of the detritus of two people all by herself. I cannot even imagine what would have happened if we had to trade places in that scenario. It would not have gone very well, I tell you that much. She absolutely crushed it and found us a wonderful new apartment. I really loved our old place, but having weathered the majority of the pandemic in it, it really a breath of fresh air to be in new surroundings. It’s sobering to learn that I cannot create just anywhere. And it’s not like I was in a strange land for five months (though Texas has changed enough in sixteen years that I now find it baffling and bewildering—an upside-down version of the place I once knew)—more on that in a later post. I was living in the home where I grew up. I was seeing family and friends regularly. Eating the comfort foods of my childhood. Traveling the roads that I first learned to drive on. But I could not write or otherwise create there. Who knows why? What matters is that I am back in Chicago. With Jennifer and the cats. With my things. In a new apartment that has not yet acquired a freight of memories and is bursting with possibility.
Now that I am back in Chicago, I plan to hit the ground running with this blog and my other creative outlets. After all, I am back in the saddle again. Is it a problem that I am a Texan who has never ridden a horse before? Will the metaphor work regardless?
I hope so, Gene.
Thank you, as always, for reading.
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