Catching up after almost 3 years - How are you?

Hello! It's been close to 3 years since the last time I wrote.

How are you?

I hope that wherever you are and whatever you're doing, if you are reading this, that you're healthy & happy or if you're carrying some sadness or frustration, that it's okay to feel so too.

A lot has happened in our lives since 2018. The world has experienced a lot of ups & downs since then - political upheavals, the pandemic, the rise of technology & social media, loved ones lost and so many more things that I'm not really well-versed with talking about.

So what have you been up to?

For some of us, we've seen both good and bad - of both people & places we know & never met. For some, we've built new connections & severed some of them. For some, we found new passions & lost some of our old love for things that used to make our hearts leap.

For some, we've learned and grown. For some, like me, we feel like we are back on square one - lost again but in a different place.

Maybe it's the fear of growing and we cling on to the warmth and comfort of where we feel safe. Maybe it's wanting to do everything perfectly from start to finish that we never really started at all. Maybe it's making our busy schedule as an excuse to put our old hobbies aside and that somehow, we lost a chunk of our old selves because of that and now we feel like we've never really moved forward.

If you've felt the same, know that you're not alone.

I've given so many excuses not to go back to writing which is ironically, one of the things that makes me feel so alive. My books have gathered dust & so is my imagination. I used to love going to these fantastic & magical places and go on an adventure and be in another characters shoes and get lost in them for hours on end. I haven't touched my sketchbook & my colored pencils - my love for making art has gotten stale and almost dead. 

I sincerely miss my old passions. 

I sometimes grieve about them like missing old friends.

Through this lost, however, I discovered a new passion - taking photos of nature & anything beautiful I stumble upon (including food!)

Taking photos has filled a small hollow part of my soul that misses dipping my hands into words & losing myself in making art. It has helped me unplug my thoughts about the millions of worries that I have about the future & some of the things that was marked in my past that still haunts me today (don't worry, I'm working with my therapist to overcome this).

It has become a sort of band-aid, a friend & a warm blanket.

Yet, here I am, once again (I'm torn into pieces - oops), trying to rekindle the old flame. Trying to write again, one step at a time; Trying to play my instrument again, one note and strum at a time: trying to read again, one book at a time; doing my best to get back what I've lost (intentionally or not) to my life again.

I miss feeling alive again.

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If you've made it through all my ramblings, I hope that you've found a new passion or have revisited an old one. I hope that you found some solace in this as well.

If you haven't done any of those and is just doing your best to keep your head above water, that's okay too. 

If nobody has told you this until now, you're not alone and your feelings of loneliness & rut are all valid. All feelings are valid.

We are in this together.

Until next time (no pressure when, okay?)

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