It's Been a While . . .

I am sitting in a small office in a house in California. Much has happened since I last wrote for Carpe Diem. The Covid-19 pandemic is running rampant, and Donald Trump is President. I have been trying to get back into writing again, feeling in my soul that it's important, and wondering why and how I got away from it . . . and I came upon an idea: Look up my old e-zine, "Empty Nest." Will it inspire me? So I did, and I found not only fabulous access to my thoughts from a former time, but also a link to this blog. I feel like I've come home.

Maybe that's because I have.

We're embedded with our daughter Amie and her family, to keep our granddaughters, now 5 and 2, out of daycare during the pandemic. I earned my Senior Adjunct title from the college this May, while teaching fully online for the first time, as the school closed for the remainder of the spring semester. It remains closed through the summer. I am now also a tutor with the school (where tutoring also has gone online), and I am co-advisor of the student newspaper. My lucrative, yet in the end troublesome, textbook publishing career is ancient history. Leaving it was still the best idea, ever. Since then, I joined the Editorial Freelancer Association and have helped many writers polish their works: in history, technology, education, psychology, sociology, leadership, and medicine. At present, I'm looking into a music project.

I have become more politically active and run an Indivisible group. (That said, I've been taking a hiatus in what I'm calling "Hotel California" during "Covid Break"; the most I've done lately is to submit an absentee ballot in the PA primary election.) I look forward to getting back to PA to help influence the outcome November's general election.

But, writing on what I care about, my life and my own personal evolution - which now includes spending time with my grandchildren and influencing the next generation - must, if not come front and center, then at least have a place. Writing and leaving it behind is all we have of ourselves, our own legacy. All of our memoirs together comprise the TRUE history of the world. With this new beginning, let's see what we can do.