One of my goals for 2022 is to start back in on the blog. I’ve created a little hidey-hole writing desk inside my new house that’s set up just for blogging. I’m sitting there right now, listening to 80s music coming in over my Google device while I stare at a drawing of myself that a friend made. It’s still a bit surreal - OK, more than a bit - to consider that I’m sitting inside my own house, in the Bay Area. Much like many things about the last few years, it has an aura of unreality about it, as if it’s all a bad dream and I’m going to wake up. The house is, of course, a positive thing, borne of long sacrifice and choices that past me made. And I’m grateful for it; but still, it’s come with a lot of stress and trauma and it’s hard, as I sit here, not to feel the weight of that.

Last week, I got COVID. I still feel a bit sniffly. It was a pretty unpleasant experience, the opposite of owning a new house, and yet, with the characteristic poetry the human mind is so known for, they have the same…smell. There is something compatible about COVID and my new house and perhaps it will fall to the next few days to shed some light on that conundrum. For now, I’m going to leave you with a picture of the little area of my house where I will be typing.