Meandering

Dear Friends,

I have been blogging, nearly daily, since 01 January 2014.  At the time of commencing this blog, my life looked extraordinarily different than it now does.  I launched this blog as a tribute to my just-deceased and much-loved mother-in-law, Joanna MacLaughlin.  It had been said of her that she never complained, and I wanted to emulate her.

Before starting this blog, I disclosed my intention to try to live without complaint for one year, to just a single individual.  My friend Iris kept my secret for a month before I launched this project. She encouraged me during that initial month, and, though I rarely saw her over the next three years, she continued to be supportive.  My gratitude goes out to her.

In the year following my commencement of this journey, my entire life collapsed.  I barely remember most of 2014.  I remember slightly more of 2015.  I came out of the fog of grief some time during 2016, to find that everything which I thought I would have into infinity had been taken from me.  I set about to find some new way of living.

But I nonetheless continued this blog, though by the end of 2016, I suspended my initial blog, the Saturday Musings.  Funny — I started the Musings in the summer of 2008, during the last great upheaval in my life.  Perhaps upheavals inspire me.

In 2017, I took my out-of-control existence and hammered myself into new form.  I sold my house, had a tiny house on wheels built, phased out my 25-year law practice (thank you, Alan, for two-and-a-half decades of loyalty) and moved to the California Delta.  Shew!

Now I am living and working in and around the California Delta Loop.  I’m serving as a paraprofessional to two very different but equally marvelous female attorneys, one long-time practitioner in Rio Vista, and one new, mid-life-career-change practitioner in Elk Grove.  I’ve finished writing a book, which I’ve asked a couple of friends to read before I hire an editor and start trying to publish it somehow, somewhere.  I also help manage the social media and marketing for the RV / Tiny House park in which I live in my 8×24 foot THOW, Angel’s Haven.

I’m about to start a twelve-day trip.  I’m headed to KC, St. Louis, and Chicago, capping the midwest swing off at the ocean when I get back to California.  I can’t promise to keep these entries going on a daily basis for the next two weeks, so I wanted to send this missive to let you all know that once again, the Mugwump has gone wandering.  Watch for me, now and again, and when I return, I will provide a full report of any excitement that you might have missed.

It’s been a freaky, sometimes-fabulous, often frightening four-and-a-half years since I started my #journeytojoy.  I still have not managed to go a year without voicing objection to that which irritates me, so. . .

. . . it’s the 09th day of the fifty-eighth month of My Year Without Complaining.  .  .and . . . 

. . . Life continues.

 

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