Imbolc                                                                      Maiden Moon

When Kate and I have our business meetings, where we discuss money, calendar and upcoming to do items, we often ask each other, how are you doing? Yesterday I said, “I’m struggling.”

This goes back at least to April of 2014 when we decided to move to Colorado. Probably before that. When I resigned my docent position at the MIA in 2013, following that by leaving my work at the Sierra Club later in the year, is perhaps a better starting point. Part of my reason for both resignations was winter driving into the city. I no longer wanted to do it regularly. Minnesota winters are brutal and produce occasional dangerous driving conditions. That rationale no longer holds here in the land of the solar snow shovel.

My second reason does still have relevance though. I wanted to focus on work only I could do. Why? My life’s quantity of sand has diminished to a third or less in the hour glass. In that remaining time I want to be sure that I’ve offered back to the world what I’ve learned, created. As the African saying goes, “When an old man (woman) dies, a library burns to the ground.”

What counts as such work? Being a spouse and father and grandparent is of course at the top of the list. After that comes creative work. I have novels yet to write, two of which I have picked up again recently.

There is, too, the reimagining project. I’m not sure why it has become so central, but it definitely has. I feel frustrated with it right now because writing it down has proved more difficult than I imagined it would be.

This blog, admittedly a random and chaotic sweep across my life, is also part of this focus. This the work only I can do that I can identify right now, though there may be, probably will be, new work that emerges over time.

Fast forward from 2013 to Shadow Mountain. Since April of 2014, we have been either preparing to move or focused on matters related to settling into our new home. In addition to several projects related to Black Mountain Drive, becoming Colorado grandparents has had its own demands. Then, too, there was cancer last year and the ongoing, familiar to many of you, adjustments to such things as arthritis and other signs of a body reacting to a lifetime of work only it could do.

As a result, I’m struggling with how to fit my work only I can do into my life as it is now. Latin, in particular translating Metamorphoses, is definitely not work only I can do. Its original purpose, helping me to absorb the stories of Greek and Latin mythology and legend, is unique to me, of course.

What am I saying here? I’m trying to write myself into an answer to the struggle, but it isn’t happening. At least not yet. It may be that I’ll have to live with the difficulty for a while longer.