Back to Reflecting

Remember this? Harold and I sitting and watching the last mover roll a box in at 9:00 p.m. at night on a cold, rainy December? I didn't even have a fork.

In the morning we decided rather than go downhill, we'd just write one big 'ol blog about the damn thing. Back to mattress shopping.

And flea market shopping. . .and painting. I love to paint furniture. . . and I had no idea until I decided to give it a try.

We took lots of breaks and I snuggled Harold and celebrated this angry, grumpy little man who's been with me from day one.

I learned what a dolly was and how to move furniture without calling out the forces.

And I painted some more.

Wallpapered well into the night. . .

I knew that some people thought I may have gone a little mad. But I had a vision. Wallpapering, painting, flea market shopping. . . you can't really be online or on your phone. You have to use both your hands. It takes patience and a lot of time. That's when I did a lot of thinking. Time to think is a luxury.

Rudyard Kipling's If is one of my favorite poems because he extols those who can "watch the things you gave your life to broken, and stoop and build 'em up with worn out tools; and lose, and start again at your beginnings, and never breathe a word about your loss" as the ones who truly come into their own.

Everyone should lose everything they have at one point in their life just to see if they can do it all over again. Tabula rasa, baby. For you loyal subscribers, you'll notice this post ends differently. It used to end with a video of my apartment and a "Back To Victory" tag - - because there was a point when I sincerely believed the journey was over. I was so focused on arriving at the destination, I failed to grasp my greatest source of joy since I started Back To A. . .

The journey itself.

And so now I beat on, a boat against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.