Happy New Year and my plans for 2024

 With a New Year visible off in the horizon, I am prompted to look back on the past year and look forward to the new year. I cannot change what happened in the past year but I can make changes that will affect my new year. One of those changes is that I want to get back to blogging. I love, love, love writing, so why am I not doing it anymore? I can name several minor reasons, but what is the underlying reason that made me stop? I come up with one thing, Covid.

Huh you say? Covid? Covid made you stop writing/blogging? Is it because you got Covid and now you have brain fog? Nope, that is not why, let me splain.

In March of 2020, Covid hit. My employer, like many others sent us all home immediately. We high-tailed it out of there carrying our computers and anything else we thought we might need for a few weeks/months of working from home. We left that place looking like a ghost town in an old Western movie, just pieces of paper floating along in the dust and wind.

So here it is 3 years and 9 months later and I am still working from home. Relegated to a little corner in my bedroom where I have just my desk, computer with double screens, and a chair. My only companion and coworker, my daughters dog Chorizo. While Chorizo is cute as heck, she is not much of a conversationalist, so mainly I speak with clients and occasionally chat with a co-worker, mostly on our intranet chat program.

CHORIZO BY MY SIDE AND DOING WHAT SHE DOES BEST

Before, when I was going to the office, I socialized, noticed things, ran across interesting stuff, and discussed it with coworkers, other employees in the building we worked in, clients and friends. Now I just see these 4 walls, 40 hours per week. At lunch instead of going with coworkers to grab a sandwich or hit our favorite Mexican food place, I walk 20 feet to my kitchen to grab whatever was left over from dinner and I watch YouTube.

Before, I knew where all the new restaurants were opening and I would visit them with coworkers or friends, now I don’t even remember what Chipotle and Rubio’s Fresh Grill even tasted like.

Before, when I was going to the office, I would make plans with friends to grab the occasional Happy Hour drink, or I would stop by my favorite stores and just wander around before going home, now I don’t even apply make up or wear anything other than jeans and a t-shirt and slippers, I don’t even know if I can still walk in street shoes!

Before I would look out my office window on the second floor and watch people fighting in the parking lot, cadets marching in the parking lot across the street where they trained police officers. I would hear the occasional accident on the busy street our office was on and we would all rush to whatever window offered the best view and discuss whose fault we thought it was. I would stop and be amused by the little squirrels that lived in the trees and sometimes would sit by my window and look in at me.

Before I was living life and finding things to entertain me, educate me, enlighten me, anger me, thrill me, confuse me and it was all fodder for my blog and my mind, keeping me active and “in the know.”

That is what Covid did! It took all that away from me!

Do I want to go back to an office? Not really. I would go back if they could figure out a way to just teleport me there, I hated the commute which was 20 miles one way and I hated dealing with the idiots that didn’t know how to drive and always felt that they needed to be where ever they were going before me because they were more important than the rest of us on the street. I like not having to apply makeup everyday and I can see that my skin also likes it. I like not having to spend money on nice office clothing and shoes. I like having Chorizo close by me all day, she soothes my soul with her entitled attitude and grumpy face.

But I loved writing, I loved my little blog and I am ready to try blogging on the regular in 2024. Not sure what I will blog about, but maybe it will make me be more alert to things in my small town and outside my window and will my family and in my heart and head. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. So, keep an eye out for me in 2024 and if I start to fall behind and get lazy, you all have my permission to call me out, you all will be my conscience!

Happy New Year to you all and may 2024 bring us all closer to the things that make us happy. May 2024 bring Peace to our world and our hearts, may it bring the knowledge to cure Cancer and Diabetes and all sorts of other diseases, may it open our eyes to the good in the world, in our small world, in our homes. It is up to you 2024 and up to each one of us to be kind, gentle and present.