honest.

As the months have gone by, the strangeness of leaving my community in northern California has eased. I'm not sure I can point to a specific moment when the ache in my chest and the twitching in my hands released but I do notice the difference, especially in reading old blogs when I was smack in the midst of that transition. The after-pangs, the initial couple years I spent down south practically frantic with a desire to escape, to go back, those times I didn't write about so much. I can point to those years and understand why; I can look back and see a pattern of withdrawing and wanting to be somewhere else. The things I did talk about were disconnections, the past feeling dream-like, and wistfulness.

Not having a "home" had a big impact on those after-pangs. I'm a creature that likes and needs to have something grounded; if I can't find it in my immediate spaces, I'll look for it in the past. And that, of course, is nostalgia. A big whopping pile of nostalgia.

Being somewhat more settled in my current situation, I notice not feeling pulled apart. I'm not so busy holding myself together so I can focus on the rusty relics that were gathering dust in the corner.

With this mental (and physical) shift, I'm left with a decision to make. This blog began with my departure from northern California; it was made up of ramblings of a wanderer. When my feet landed, reluctantly, down south, that transitional state continued internally. Then my grandmother died. Then I wrote some fiction and actually managed to finish NaNoWriMo two times.

If I'm being really honest with myself, the transition is never over. I'm not someone who does well with stagnation. The act of "change" isn't performed in wide sweeps; I feel it more in the gentle pushing, the mild discontent, and the urging to keep working. BUT, this blog is not about a homeless human anymore. My writing isn't from the perspective of a literal lost wanderer, suffering from the pain and grief of broken relationships. Even when I was in northern California, deep into teaching and practicing yoga, shit, my writing was filled with pretentious, dogmatic bullshit. It was honest to where I was at the time, and some of it still has meaning for me, but I have moved on and grown out of that skin.

But what's bizarre about this is that I still associate my writing with that person. I still associate this blog with that person.

That isn't honest anymore.

All this is not to say that I'm abandoning the blog. I'm just thinking "out loud" to feel out the identity of this blogspace. Maybe short stories? I can think of a couple projects I could post. Maybe short poems.

Time will tell, as the saying goes.