Navigating the gusts of change

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My bestie snapping pics of the sunset.

Previously I was a socks on first then shoes kind of person. Lately I've been a one sock and one shoe on then the other sock and shoe type of gal. I don't exactly know what that means long term, but it seemed full of meaning when I was considering how to start this post.

If I had my way, I'd be in the thick of hand sewing an Alexandria quilt. Instead I'm full of machine-piecy notions. I didn't plan 2023 to meander along this road, but other things have occurred that weren't on my list of To Do's, definitely a let go and let God kind of year. And if that isn't your scene, how about the title of today's installment; navigating the gusts of change. Either way, I'm feeling blown off my preferred choice of course, but better to make hay or quilts or write books while the sun shines or the machine sews or the prose emerges than not.

My BFF spent the weekend with us, perhaps that's why I'm in this introspective mood. I've known this lovely lady for forty years, boy that's not a small chunk of time anymore, lol. We shared wonderful chats, delicious milkshakes, and a chilly but awesome beach outing where the sunset beckoned for us to remain on the sand, yet the wind pushed me toward the car, leaving her to enjoy the day's end, then she too hightailed back to the car, where my husband had already retreated. We're getting old, I considered, not willing to stand out in the wind despite nature's beauty, easily seen from inside a warm vehicle.

I wanted to spend this year hand-sewing, but a pinch nerve overruled that desire. I wanted to share our home with my husband's sister and her husband but cancer blew those plans askew. I wanted to draft a sequel to The Earthen Chronicles but instead I'm writing a story about life and death and alternate realities. No big mystery to where that theme emerged, ahem, but I am thoroughly enjoying crafting the kind of tale that truly drives my muse, love and regret heaped with a large dose of how can the heart move past the agony to heal? I don't know how this book will end, which is half the fun of writing it, and right now I need a copious amount of joy. The machine-piecing is also laced with the thrill of employing a new manner of sewing, those easy-peasy sixteen-patch quilt blocks immensely satisfying in a ba-da-bing-ba-da-boom manner. Hanging out with a bestie was a big win for my soul, which still aches for a beloved lost in the corporeal. I remain on this plane, at times wondering why.

Such is life, rife with peaks and valleys and marvelous sunsets that at times aren't to admire longer than seconds. A reason, a season, forever; this rule remains, yet not for us to choose how or why or when. Right now I'm happy putting on one sock, then a shoe. Maybe that's how it is, as one approaches the latter section of their fifties. I feel like I've stepped into a new reality, but man I'm super-grateful writing and sewing remain within this realm. And tomorrow I'll try it all again.

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