It’s Been A While

I entered 2014 with the greatest of intentions. Shoot often and blog the acceptable images. Start taking yoga classes and start running. Always make fresh meals.

And then…

Life happened. Day-to-day living was sapping all of my energy. I was averaging 3 hours of sleep a night, but in 20-40 minute bursts, followed by long periods of being awake. I was too stressed out to “see” well, so I wasn’t shooting much. And the blog posts dried up (obviously).

And then…

I watched the World Cup over the summer and fell back in love with soccer. For me, it felt like I had come home, to something that had given me so much joy decades ago. I felt my energy start to return. I added lots of running to my Wii Fit routine and started doing planks. I took a yoga class and did pretty well.

And then…

My beloved 13-year-old cat, Simon, started losing his appetite. At first I thought it was one of his usual dramatic reactions to a new batch of his food (same food, but he always knew when it was from a new batch and he’d refuse to eat it because it was “different”). Nothing I tried revived his appetite–and this was a cat who ALWAYS had a great appetite. In August, he was diagnosed with intestinal lymphoma. After some soul-searching, I decided to try chemotherapy for Simon. He seemed to want to stay around, and as long as he wanted to live, I’d do what I had to to give him as long a good quality of life as I could.

Unfortunately, his body did not respond to the chemo and I let him go in early October. Not a day goes by that I don’t miss him with every part of my being.

All of that left me heartbroken and exhausted. My insomnia had returned with a vengeance. My younger cat, Charlie, and I did our best to help each other grieve for Simon. In November, I adopted Clancy, a sweet orange tabby, who had been dumped near the Fruitvale BART station. While there is no replacing Simon, Clancy has made a Clancy-shaped space in our hearts (well, it did take Charlie a week or so to accept this Cat Who Was Not Simon).

And now…

I finished off the rolls of film that had languished in my cameras all summer and autumn. I can feel the creative part of my soul reawakening. I have edited some of these new images and hope to open up the tap on this blog.

Stay tuned.