Wow. Where the heck have I been for the last YEAR? Clearly I am no Dooce but now that annlemon.com is up and running (thank you Mr. Collins!) its kinda embarrassing to have this dead blog link. Plus, I love the good blogs.
What's new? Well, as my friend Alan says, I've been "in the hall". (When one door closes, yadda yadda.... but until the second one opens, in the hall you are). I went through a sort of grief overload between losing a couple friends my own age (cancer, car wreck), having my mom take a downturn and, um, losing a baby. That we weren't planning for but that I got TOTALLY excited about. It was only 12 weeks but, still. Turns out when they tell you how risky it is to get pregnant at age 45 they ARE NOT KIDDING.
Anyhoo all those things happening more or less together, not to be a total wimp, but sort of made me feel like I just fell off the horse that was my life. I just kind of STOPPED. First because I was extremely tired during that little spell of early preganacy and only wanted to lay down for a couple months, then, because my body I think got really whacked out with the hormonal effects of the baby's death, and then lastly when it was all over with I just had one of those moments where you step outside your life and go, What is the POINT? What am I trying to accomplish here? Who am I? It's probably about half over: what do I want to do with Part 2 of this movie?
So. In the meantime, I kept on freelancing (a little) and teaching (unfortunately, not as well as I did last year) and being a mom (holding on maybe tighter than ever to a certain small person) and only collapsing into a weeping pile of tears, like, every now and then, usually, for some reason, in the car. And then, thanks to the loving care of my wonderful husband, the patience of my child, a little bit of therapy and 10 milligrams of Prozac DAILY I feel a WHOLE lot better now and have regained my zest. Also, I finally committed to a course of action for the next phase: after a whole heap of hemming and hawing I applied to a master's program to get a teaching certificate in secondary ed (for English). I decided to hold onto what I LOVE doing (mentoring kids) and let go of the part I'm not that passionate about, anymore (the business of advertising) while still hopefully giving them lots of tools and techniques for expressing themselves and their creativity in this crazy digital world. So, now all I have to do is get a B or better in 2 math classes and pass the PRAXIS 1. Whoo hoo!
