Another birthday

Another birthday, another year. Yesterday while driving I had a magical mind full of thoughts to write, journaling about my life and my year past. Today, of course, when I actually have the ability to write, my thoughts are mundane and boring. I still don't want to miss it, though, this reminiscing and evaluating thing that I try to do every year. So be it.

This photo, just found recently, says more than I can express about the passing years. I was 36 here, mapping soils in the St Joe. Deanna found this photo among Lance's things and scanned it to email to me. The sweet young guys who work for me were delighted, laughing about 80's "big hair" and seeing me in a different light than the leader that I am now doing this work.

I guess the most recent life shift on my mind is Lance's death, less than a month ago. Somehow in the process of grieving, and being with my daughters who loved him, with his Mother, the exact age my own mother would have been, with his current wife and present family, somehow that whole process has given space for going back, for remembering, for again trying to sort out how life was then and how it is now.

The shift I made in those years was momentous. The shift I am making in the year to come is just as much so, although less dramatic perhaps, and yet it still feels huge to me, down inside myself. The shift I made then was all about beginnings and the future, the shift I am making now is about fruition, completion, even a bit of reward and some relaxation.

The year just past seems like a blur, and yet at the moment the only thing that really stands out about it is just how long it took to pass! This past summer seems to have passed very slowly as well, marked by travels and reviews, work and family, and of course, marked with a huge exclamation point by the travels to Spokane for Lance during that last week in August.

Hopefully as this day goes by, I'll think of something to write about this past year that will help put it all in perspective for me. For the time being, though, it seems that the year is marked by my posts on the MoHo travel tales. I work, then I go somewhere with Mo, then I work again. I can only remember how things have been by going back to that journal, and Mo and I laugh a lot about how we can only track our travels by reading our own blog. I gues that is the reason for this one as well, I know that I am trying to track my own travels, the inner ones, the life changing ones, even the boring ones. Still haven't really figured out the difference between the online journal and the paper ones except I don't have to rummage around in sheafs of paper and try to figure out where they all are anymore.

Strange world it is.