Forward!

March 6, 2021

The riverwalk is crowded again, but I can’t blame my fellow walkers and cyclists. For those of us who didn’t book a spring break trip, these sunny days in the 40s are still a welcome break from the depths of winter.

Working my way down the slush-covered trail, I passed a useless fence that attempts to keep visitors off the riverbank. A woman was looking intently over the barrier, down into the water. I asked if she saw anything good. She told me she was studying the erosion along the bank.

“That’s not good,” I quipped.

“Well, you need to look at it before you can fix it,” the woman replied.

I immediately felt the relevance of this sentence to my current situation.

Last week, I took part in a discussion about how much we should acknowledge hard times before we move on and try to be grateful for what we have. Longtime readers of this blog (I think a year, especially 2020, counts as a long time) know that I give a lot of thought to the latter. I try not to complain, preferring to use humor and –yes — gratitude to understand life.

That’s my outward appearance, but inside I’m a bit different. It’s no secret that this winter was hard for me. In addition to missing friends and community activities, I also longed for some favorite places that were separated from me by icy backroads. The result was a lot of time spent dejected and in front of a screen.

Now that spring’s here, I’m more free to acknowledge these problems (look at them) and take steps in the other direction (fix them). So I’m moving somewhere that’s closer to my favorite places and more central to my various communities. Even though I’m a card-carrying introvert, I’m still a member of a social species. Having these people and places nearby should help me immensely. It’s my hope that when the next winter or (heaven forbid) next pandemic comes around, I’ll have the resources to live a more fulfilling life.

Sorry I won’t be around to fix the erosion.