Category: life

imposters, bears, deer, feathers

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Oh and a hospital and a hotel, too.

I meant to get back here sooner, really. But oh my, this school term, and this last month in particular. Sometimes I wonder if this is the right thing for me, being a student at this time in my life.

Just this week in one of the live classes my professor started class by first asking if we knew what “imposter syndrome” is (why yes) and if any of us ever feel it. I raised my hand, maybe too quickly, as did some others. It led to an enlightening discussion and the professor admitting that she also has felt like an imposter sometimes (brilliant human, many degrees, law professor, writer, speaker, mother). I see her as confident, brilliant, funny, prone to some most excellent tangents in class—the opposite of an imposter. She tried to set some of us straight but also called us out on our perfectionism. Double whammy.

This coming week I am wrapping up my fourth out of six terms in this masters program. I’m still swoony over the program in general, but would be lying if I said this term did not utterly kick my ass. It did. Add on top of it a health crisis for my father, and my own self-imposed perfection as I try to be a good employee and manager, parent to my adult kids, decent partner, caring daughter… well, I’m not doing any of it all that well at the moment.

After a long week sleeping in a hotel room and spending the day in a hospital with my brother hovering over our father, I’m back at the cottage for the weekend and trying to be gentle on myself. Letting my husband take care of me, trying to remember to tell him know how much I appreciate him during all of this.

deer prints on beach

A few years ago, a neighbor saw a bear on our community road, less than a half mile from our cottage. She had a photo to prove it, and the community was buzzing about this bear as it was seen and photographed in other places nearby. This week, a different neighbor thinks they saw two bears on the beach in front of their cottage. They posted a photo of what looks (to me) like human footprints, but what do I know? Bears are somewhat new around here, I think.

That said, I walked the beach tonight and last night on high alert for bears. I only saw clear evidence of humans, dogs, birds, and deer. More deer prints on the beach than I can recall in other years, which makes me think there is a healthy deer population around here right now. While I’m out for a dusk beach walk, I’ll much rather see a cascade of deer coming down the dune to drink from the lake than a pair of bears, thankyouverymuch.

cold beach, wave patterns

I also love feathers, which there is never any shortage of here on the beach. Mostly seagull feathers, which for some reason I love the feel of in hand on a walk, particularly if it’s windy. A seagull feather is strong and won’t let you hold it any old way in the wind. Just try to hold it against the wind… it pushes back until you turn it sideways. It feels like a feat of perfect engineering, a miracle of strength that’s literally light as a feather.

I saw these small feathers as I walked tonight, washed up from the water, some soaked and sandy and some mostly dry. I’m not sure what kind of bird these are from, but the shading was striking.

small feathers (anyone know what kind of bird?)

I am reminding myself to breathe this weekend. To slow down, too. To not rush through everything just to get it done and behind me. To be patient with the things that aren’t mine to control. To drop a little of the perfectionism, too, and trust that I’m where I belong. I’m not entirely sure where the feathers and bears and deer come in here but maybe I should not be so worried about bears on the beach (but aware, of course) and remember to marvel in the beauty of feathers and watching deer come down to drink.

here we are, September

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September skies are different

Wow, August. You were a blur. A washout. A near total loss. I had high hopes for you! I had nearly a four-week break from classes and I had plans: a week with my kid and his partner, making peach and apple pies, a day-trip or two, long beach walks. Nope. I got Covid, or, more aptly, it got me. My first ever bout. Three and a half days off work (I should have taken more, but I’m stubborn), two nearly full weeks in bed (working), and five weeks later I still sound like I’m not quite right.

I’m just now getting back up to full throttle. Work is busy. My two classes are demanding. But the fog has cleared and I feel equipped to manage it all (mostly). But I completely missed the peaches, and I’m sad about it, because there’s not much better than a local peach that you’ve closed up in a paper bag to ripen, somehow protected it from the plethora of fruitflies that are the hallmark of a Michigan late summer, and then stood over the kitchen sink to eat while the drips run off your elbows.

Oh well. Next year, peaches. At least now there are apples! And hard squash! Oh, younger would me would be so shocked at my excitement over seasonal produce. There is a farm stand nearby that has the best honey crisp apples. I think I love honey crisp best… I buy them every year, but there are always new varieties to try. Whatever this apple seller has this year, I’ll branch out and try some other variety. Why not?

So, before the bout with Covid, I did get to spend a few days with my kid before I got sick (thankfully no one else caught it) just after that particularly spectacular lightning storm I wrote about in my last post. Those two days had their own magic. We laid under blankets on the deck watching the Perseid meteor shower at its peak, and the next day we anxiously checked, rechecked, then checked again so that we wouldn’t miss the monarch hatch from its chrysalis on our clothes line. Our vigilance paid off and we watched it push its way out of the chrysalis and unfurl its sloppy wings. What a show!

about a week before hatching
morning of hatching
wings dry, ready to go

So, okay, August wasn’t a total wash. While still recovering, that very last morning of August I woke up early for no good reason, alone in the cottage, and like most mornings looked out over the lake. But this morning the full moon (a blue moon, no less) was setting over a slightly hazy, purple-pinkish horizon. It’s always pretty amazing to catch the moonset over the lake but usually it’s under the cover of night.

August 31, morning moonset over Lake Michigan

Anyway, we’re past the halfway mark of September as I write this on a hazy, warm, quiet morning on the lake. Besides apples and squash, September has given us a few rainbows, and I’ve seen plenty of snakes on my walks (all garter, I think). The woods are loaded with fungi, too. Other surprises and delights so far this month: a few days with my brother (who I don’t get to see nearly enough), and while my dad was here last weekend he agreed to let us help him down (and back up) the 36 stairs to the beach! He’s 94, and I don’t think he’s made that trek in at least 15 years. We all celebrated.

Today I’m doing homework, taking a pause to read in a hammock, walking the beach, and making a soup from the tomatoes, potatoes, green beans, zucchini, onion and garlic I bought from a local market stand on Friday. I’ve been slowly shooting my way through a roll of Lomochrome turquoise in my Minolta X700. Maybe I’ll try to finish that roll off today on a wander and get that off to the lab this week.

I think it’s going to be a good day.

happy to see you, Friday

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Do you know those weeks where you’re just ticking off all the things on your to-do list, everything is falling into place at work, you’re ahead of schedule on things, nothing has slipped off your radar, and you’re just crushing your responsibilities?

This week has been just about the opposite of that. I’ve made mistakes at work. Steered a coworker wrong. Answered emails and chats (many, in fact) without reading the whole question, or even misinterpreting the question. Didn’t do prep work for a meeting. Dropped lots of work balls. Logged in to my live class on Tuesday night, after a total marathon of a day, only to realize I had the date wrong.

But it’s Friday morning now and I’m easing into my work day, doors and windows open while listening to the music of the birds and the crickets, and I’m pretty sure it’s mostly going to be okay. This semi-crappy week did have bright spots. I facilitated a group in one meeting and not only didn’t crumble from anxiety, but actually enjoyed myself. I owned my mistakes and apologized to the coworker I steered wrong. There is a pair of deer that keeps showing up on the beach in the evenings, and they have been a delight to watch. One of the resident eagles soared in front of the cottage during my Wednesday night class and landed briefly on the beach in front of me, while we were discussing employment at-will and how employees can or can’t be terminated in other countries.

Nobody gets it all right all the time, no matter what they say, and it’s too hard an ideal to live up to. I’m still working on learning my limits, knowing what to say no to, when to delegate, when to push, when to step back. I’m not afraid to be wrong, or to not know everything.

In that Wednesday night class, our professor encouraged us to engage in self-care this summer, despite our busyness and our commitments. This weekend, aside from catching up on homework and professional reading, I’m hoping to spend some time cleaning and taking care of the cottage I so love and appreciate. I have some poetry books I want to dig in to, and a short novel. I want to paint a little, just for fun, with no expectations. I want to nap in one of the hammocks behind the house, under the pines.

the calm serene

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Late spring, before the summer vacationers, when the sun warms the sand and skin just enough to barefoot walk the beach at near sunset. I’d say it’s my favorite time of year, but if you’ve read any of my posts over the years, you know how fickle I am. Every season, when I’m in it, is my favorite on Lake Michigan.

The giant, blooming lilac bush between our cottage and the neighbor’s is humming with life, bumblebees loud as tiny drones busy collecting pollen, honey bees, too, and yesterday an early monarch. Oh how I love the sounds and the smells coming from this bush! I could watch this microcosm all day.

Right now there are wildfires in Canada, and so the sunrises and sunsets create an odd haze, orange creamsicle orb rising behind the cottage and fading into the haze well before it reaches the horizon over the lake. Even the sliver, waxing moon and Venus are a soft, hazy orange.

The beach was quiet last night as we walked until we heard—well before we saw—this low-flying flock heading north over the lake. We stopped to watch and listen, falling quiet to fully take in the language of the geese. Are they shouting directions at each other? Comments, like in a group of cyclists where leaders point out road scrabble, bumps, holes? Is it encouragement, I wonder?

And then it was quiet again.

I finished a roll of film after work yesterday, something I think I’ve only done twice in the past several years, using busyness and lack of inspiration as excuses. I brought cameras with me, too; I have a dozen or more rolls of film just humming with potential. The world is heavy and beautiful, but hasn’t it always been heavy and beautiful? Isn’t there a defiance in celebrating the beauty in the midst of the heaviness? I might try that on for a bit.

itching for change

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Does anyone else feel like this right now? I feel so itchy. I want a change of some sort. I’m at the start of a new term, and classwork isn’t heavy yet. It’s spring—a weird in-between that currently is bringing greenery but not enough sun and warmth. It’s raining and grey, and I want to be outside. Work is busy, of course, but not hectic. Is it weird that I kind of like hectic? I love a long to-do list, even when I can’t tick everything off. Maybe especially when I can’t tick everything off.

I’m trying to be more mindful of money and stuff, what I do and don’t do with those things, how I respond to stressors by using those things. Wanting change makes me want to buy something to make it all feel better. “I need a new set of paints!” I tell myself, when the paints I have are sitting on my non-work desk, waiting for me to use them. “That handmade paper will make my painting so much better!” my brain shouts, when I’ve got a box of paper waiting to be used. “I need a new book!” when I’ve already got multiple books in progress. Oh, and I start perusing the internet for cameras that I don’t need (I’m barely using the ones I have). Art supplies. Online classes. A new hobby. Clothes. A haircut.

I don’t love that I look to outside sources to fill these holes, but I do, and I don’t think I’m alone. I think it stems from my youth, when money was so tight and those little extras were rare (but always celebrated and appreciated). I sometimes feel like I deserve them now, these little treats. But amassing more stuff while not using what I have? That’s not what I want. I used to marvel at people who said they felt bored. But, here I am, bored with my very existence and wanting change.

Last summer, in a small burst of creativity, I used a bunch of Cokin filters with a roll of color film, mostly taking photos on the Lake Michigan shoreline. Bold color filters and a super-speed filter (a chunky prism-looking thing that distorts half the frame, evoking movement). I love the muted colors in this image and the bright line created by the sun.

What I can do, I think, to appease this itch and make use of this weird energy:

  • Read the books I have
  • Make art with the supplies I have (I do not need more!)
  • Unsubscribe from emails to retailers that keep offering discounts on things I don’t need (I can always resubscribe later)
  • Use the cameras and film I have (and experiment more with the filters I have, because… fun)
  • Write a list every day and put the little, non-work things on it (make one postcard, read one poem or chapter, do this one self-care thing, etc.)
  • Declutter and offer things I’m not using to others who want or need them
  • Explore this feeling in writing (hello, ignored blog)
  • Cook more (and no, I don’t need any new pans or baking dishes or serving bowls thankyouverymuch)

These things sound fair, and doable, and smart if I do say so myself. And, since I drafted this post early yesterday, I even took a lunchtime paint break and made myself bookmarks for my class reading. I also used my favorite dutch oven, a pretty green Staub, to cook dinner—a one-pot cheesy lemon-ricotta pasta dish my daughter turned me on to.

So, do you feel like this right now, too? Are you exploring or ignoring that feeling? What are you doing to work with it?

here I am again

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beach find

I have struggled, like many, for many different reasons, over the last several years. It’s been hard to be creative, hard to assert my voice, hard to do the things beyond what I’m responsible for. This is a weird age, folks. This mid-50s.

I’m still a worker, and will be for a long time. I’ve gone back to school. I’m not a grandparent. My kids don’t need me in the way that young kids do (they’re in their late 20s). I’m trying to reconnect with people I’ve quietly but not purposely disconnected from. I think I closed in on myself for a bit, and I hope they’ll have me again. I hope the world will have me again, or at least let me tiptoe around it a bit, gain my footing.

My late 40s were a burst of freedom and creativity. And by burst I mean small burst, as I’m not a go-big-or-go-home kind of person anyway. I traveled a little, I read more, I wrote some, I made some art just for me, I fell in love with film photography.

But the political climate, the state of world affairs, the heaviness of human life, all of these things have converged and I’ve muted myself. What does my voice matter? What could I possibly create that has worth in times of what feels like such human suffering?

I am extraordinarily sensitive. I was ridiculed for my sensitivity when I was young. I’ve spent a lifetime trying to “overcome” being sensitive—I now know the folly in that. But what I do know how to do in times of difficulty is work, and that’s what I’ve done. Is it partly avoidance? Sure. Self preservation? That, too. Me busy is me not overwhelming myself with the sadness of the world. But, that ignores the parts that are still beautiful; the tiny fact that there is a woodpecker who is insistent upon interrupting my afternoons by knocking at my roof, gutters, and windows. That in my backyard the lilac bush is greening and will soon flower. That I can now walk the Lake Michigan shoreline for miles after the high water devastation of just a few years ago. That there is still meaning, that people are still doing meaningful things. Life in the crazy and unknowable world keeps going on. Us sensitive folks have to find new ways to live within the change and weirdness and uncertainty.

I have to find ways to reconcile my need to know what’s around the corner. I have to approach new things with curiosity, rather than control. I remember when I was open to new experiences, and I have to do that again. I really will try.

While I’m trying, I am giving myself little projects. Art postcards are so doable, fun. I persuaded a friend to join me in a call and response art project, which was exciting and delightful and just enough of a push to get my creative juices flowing again.

Summer feels like the time to be more creative, to me, anyway, and it’s just around the corner. Maybe it’s the longer days and the color and the warmth of the sun on my skin, just the lifting of darkness. I don’t know. But I’ve got to shake off the malaise and find joy and beauty where it exists, create for the joy of creating, and not get mired in worry that my voice is not worthy, or useful. Maybe it’s someone else’s spark to creativity or call to action?

I still have this blog, and while I don’t really know where it’s heading, I’m going to try to pay it some attention. Just for me, maybe. Or you, if you’re still reading.

thanksgivings and goodbyes

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This week there was an unexpected funeral. An unexpected loss for a family that was, for a formative time in my youth, intertwined with my own family. We shared between us music, creativity, food, vacations on the lake, so very much laughter.

She was one of my mother’s dearest friends, and if there is an afterlife, I know they’ve already found each other and are causing trouble. They are drinking wine, gossiping, and possibly cheating at pinochle. Even if there isn’t an afterlife, the thought of them together again makes me undeniably glad, and so I hold onto that. Her husband of some 50+ years, her children and grandchildren, now have the work of learning to carry on without her.

The flurry of death and the activity of a funeral or service of some sort is only ever the start. A distraction for a time. Just after that, your world begins to turn again, but you still don’t quite understand how that’s happening after such a seismic shift. We are resilient and time does soften, but the now is painful.

I read something this morning, though I can’t find it again. An article where the author wrote of loss and grieving and that one does not go through “a period of grieving” and then one day they’re done. The loss remains, the grieving is fluid and changing—the person is changed. I don’t think we do grief and loss very well, our modern society. We experience it and shouldn’t expect to carry on as we were before. How could we?

This is to say that my heart hurts for these people I have known for decades, and while I have the benefit of time softening the edges of the loss of my own mother, it was tough to say goodbye this week to a woman who was like a mother to me, and for whom I didn’t do enough to show my appreciation. And so feelings and memories of my mother also flooded me today. I don’t find myself in that space too often now, of digging in to that loss, but I know enough to be in peace with whatever percolates. Thinking of my mother is like visiting her where she is, somewhere in the ether, in some non-physical realm that is like a constant, too-bright summer.

I sometimes dream about her, and in my dreams she’s breathless, excited, so happy! She has just come in from some adventure (she always wanted to travel, but didn’t really get to) and she asks me rapid fire questions about how I’m doing, my kids, what am I up to, what I’ve seen, what I’m creating. She doesn’t look a day over 40. Her smile is, as always, infectious. I answer all her questions but she won’t answer mine, only wants to hear about me. I know the time will be fleeting so I hold her tighter, try to make her stay longer, but it never works. She’s off to her next adventure and I wake up with a lingering emptiness, but a warmth. I got to see my mom.

So I’m thankful for the remembering, and sharing in the vulnerability of loss with this family. I hope their softening comes quick, although I know she was an awfully bright light, and those take longer to dim.

I’m not much for sunrises

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Oh, I don’t mean that I don’t like them. They’re probably as worthy as sunsets. Not that I know this from personal experience. For every 30 sunsets I’ve seen, I’ve maybe seen 1 sunrise. If that.

I’m just not a morning person. But, when I do wander out of bed early either by necessity or elusive sleep, I’m often rewarded. Like this morning.

sunrise this morning

On the rare occasions I am up at or near the sunrise and I comment on its beauty, my husband quips back about how I should have seen the sky five minutes before, because it was even better. (He wasn’t here this morning, so neither he nor I have any idea if the sky was even better five minutes before my iPhone captured this image.) The lesson is that if you’re a late riser who lives with an early riser, you’ll never win that contest.

Some mornings, I’ll admit, do make me wish my natural rhythm compelled me to jump out of bed with the sunrise, especially now when the days are getting so short that by the time I’m done with work it feels like time to get into my pajamas (okay, who am I kidding–I mean change from my day pajamas to my night pajamas). Real clothes are so 2019.

But here we are in mid-November, closing in on the start of another pandemic new year. And I find myself finishing out a year that felt less creative than the one before it. This is not a direction I want to go. I miss writing (as evidenced by ignoring this blog). I haven’t painted that much. I have film and cameras waiting for me to take them on a date. I’m struggling for inspiration.

If someone told me they wanted to [write, draw, paint, make anything] and they were asking for my advise, I would tell them to do that thing every day, even if what they produced seemed like garbage or they never, not one single time, found any inspiration, because (I would promise them, and I’d be right) one of the things they’d produce would end up perfect, swoon-worthy, beautiful. I’d tell them to use ordinary things as prompts for their creativity, like billboards, or conversations they overhear in line at the grocery store, or the colors of the morning (or evening, in my case) sky. I’ve got the same excuses as everyone else for not getting down to the business of creating. I can listen to my own advice, too.

What if I did this–attempted something every day? Like, just a paragraph of writing. Or more, if I felt like it or had the time. A whisper of a thought. A tiny watercolor or a start of a bigger watercolor. A sketch of a photograph I want to make. A Polaroid. Much of it will be no good, but it will be practice. And, what if there was a nugget? What if 1 out of 30 was a spark of something beautiful? What if I tried throwing a few more sunrises in with my sunsets in 2022? I might just try it.

I wrote a little piece about menopause

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Should that headline be followed by “and lived to tell about it”? Or, “and didn’t die of embarrassment”? No. No it shouldn’t. It’s just menopause, and it happens to everyone with a uterus (oh, is that a scary word, too? sorry-not-sorry), which is a lot of people. C’mon. Bodies, functions, life. No biggie.

I don’t really talk about work here because this blog is a place for me to share my film photography and personal writing, but I did write this article and a terrific co-worker through some workplace magic got it to the right person who then got it to someone who wanted to publish it. So it’s a short article about how employers can support their employees going through menopause in the workplace. I’m proud of it. But there’s so much more to say.

I’m not an expert about menopause in the workplace. I work for a great company, an HR services company that helps employers stay compliant and do the right things for employees and for their business. I read plenty of articles about keeping millenials happy and engaged, and I see a lot of images of hip looking young people attached to these articles. But, most workplaces are made of multiple generations, and so many women I know are working their asses off right now, and I’m not really seeing articles about making sure we’re happy, engaged, fulfilled, and expanding in our positions. We’re just kind of there, plugging along, holding down all the forts, because it’s what we do.

Maybe the bigger issue is that women become invisible after a certain age. If we’re not sexy, we’re not terrifically useful anymore. And menopause, apparently, is not sexy. Personally (and again, I’m no expert here) I’m kind of thinking menopause is sexy. I mean, you don’t have to plan things around periods anymore. You don’t have to travel with all the accoutrements that periods demand (pads, tampons, period underpants, which are a real thing but I still take them to mean the ugliest, oldest skivvies in the back of your drawer that you save for when you’re on your period because they’re already ruined and you can’t ruin them any worse). And hot flashes? What’s sexier than stripping in the middle of whatever the hell you’re in the middle of because suddenly your body is like this incredible furnace that can heat up a room in seconds flat?

I don’t mean to be cavalier about the health aspects of it. Menopause has some issues aside from the physical nuisances, like osteoporosis and increased risk for heart disease. But, so does aging. The alternative is not being alive, because living is aging. And that’s not where I’d like to be.

So, anyway. I wrote a little work article about menopause and I hope I can write more articles about aging in the workplace. And, I’m lucky enough to be working for a company that values and honors me and other women at this stage in our lives. I hope you can say the same. But if you can’t, maybe take a chance and start talking about it at work. Maybe don’t be afraid to tell people what’s going on with you or if you’re struggling. I’ve had some interesting conversations since the article came out, and that’s where it starts.

navigating this in-between

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I’m still still here. Hoping you are, too, without having been kicked around too much by what we’ve collectively gone through, now over a year of COVID, the end of a U.S. administration that tried our humanity, the beginning of a new one that maybe helps you breathe easier, too.

I realize what I just wrote there will connect with some who read this and will cause others to roll their eyes, stop reading, unfollow this blog. But there, I’ve said it. If you don’t know me personally or haven’t guessed from previous posts, I am a liberal, pro-human, science-believing, hate-hating human. I want everyone to feel safe, secure, loved, cared for. The last four years under the former president were traumatizing, and the final year of that administration felt like the icing on a great big shitcake.

I’m breathing again. I don’t flinch when I see a news update pop up on my phone (at least not as often–there is still dire news, but our current president’s reaction to it is more appropriate, without insults or hate-tweets or disinformation). And now, because people I love are getting vaccinated, I can see them, hug them, look at their whole faces and expressions. But this country is profoundly divided. I don’t know if it’s more divided than ever; it’s always been divided. It feels deeper to me. There is no meeting in the middle with people who believe something global and devastating is a hoax, or that helping their neighbors takes something away from them, or that trump’s version of a “great” America denies Americans whose ancestors built this country.

I don’t have answers, but I have some hope. I wish I’d have written here about how I was feeling a year ago when the virus began to unfold. How I felt when a knee on a neck made people take to the streets and demand the human rights they should already be afforded. How I worried about family and friends getting sick. How I felt when a friend suffered an unimaginable loss. How navigating grocery shopping turned into a political landmine. Staying quiet has been my protective blanket to avoid the uncomfortable. Staying home got comfortable. It will take me a while to feel safe outside of the cocoon.

I’ve missed my daughter and haven’t seen her in a year and a half, but she is well and safe. And, we will see her and her partner this summer. Our son, his partner, and another friend just came and stayed with us for two days. All grown young adults in their early 20s, they were happy to be parented a bit while recovering from their vaccines. We cooked for them, and it connected me to the memory of my mother doing the same. When I was in my early 20s and came to the cottage with my boyfriend, often bringing other friends, my mom was ebullient, cooking for us, starting spontaneous dance parties, organizing late night skinny dips, howling at the moon, staying up late into the night with us, wanting to know everything about our lives in the city. This part of parenting is delicious. Like when you have little kids and they fall asleep wrapped around you and you’re sweating and need to go to work or do dishes but it’s so painfully delicious that you’re not about to disturb them and so you stay, sweating, maybe with an arm or leg cramping beneath their weight, not doing what needs doing but wrapped in the biggest, yummiest love. It feels like that. Different, but just as delicious.

I’ve been busy, though. I am grateful to have a job that has kept me busy doing something I love and working with people I respect and admire, and for a company that I know values me. Even so, I’ve given a lot over the past year and haven’t allowed myself balance. I promised myself this year I’d take my PTO and I may need reminders to do that, but I’m committed.

My cameras need some love, too. I still have a shoebox of film, although I’m down to the oldest, most expired, and weirdest rolls at this point. I shot a few rolls over the last two months but am in no rush to get them developed. I’m not bored with my usual subjects, but I’m eager for some new scenery, a new town or woods, a new photographic find. I’m painting, and trying my hand at sketching. It feels good to create. It has always felt good to create.

Anyway. I am feeling some hope in what feels like an in-between time of still not-quite-right, but starting to get a little better. Spring brings growth and that is a physical manifestation of hope, at least for me. I don’t want to go back to what was our normal, because I don’t think it was particularly sustainable. I want to go forward to something else, something with a whole lot of love. I don’t want to use any energy toward anything else.