It is hard to build a new life after pneumonia number four.

Running my own clinic and seeing patients and keeping track of a business for eleven years, along with two children, now adults done with college and masters and jobs, I did not have an enormous amount of time.

During covid, I started beach walking with a person. Two years into covid, they say, “I have to get back to my real life.” Oh. They say, “You need your own life.” Um, yes, and clearly they are not in it, by their choice. That was a year into pneumonia four and I was still on oxygen. The person bailed. I was a detour to get them through covid. Ugly, but I am trying to learn everything I can from them. About myself and who and what to avoid!

WordPress and the blogging community helps sustain me through this! I can write when I am ill (at least so far) and when the pandemic closed down. I am so encouraged that people contribute from all over the world. A small candle of hope.

I don’t know if I’ll be able to do a limited clinic or not. I am hoping so.

Meanwhile, I’ve been getting to know more people outside clinic and going to live music and dancing and doing open mikes. I am doing the poetry open mikes. A friend in a band says, “But you don’t come to mine!” “That’s a music open mike.” “We need poetry,” he says. So I’ve gone twice and it has been really fun and I am getting to know that community as well. Last Thursday someone said my poems are weird. “I don’t mean bad, just from a different angle.” Meaning unusual, I think. Perspective.

I have been here for 23 years. I know many people in the music community from singing in chorus all those years, I have a church community, I know many people in the dance community, my father and I were in the Wooden Boat community, I have both good and not so good connections in the medical community. The legal community knows both my children, through Mock Trial competitions. I was in the Rotary for ten years and that is another wonderful community. The exchange students going all over the world and people giving back also give me hope!

Suddenly I am busy. I will have to start choosing between things. I still have the aftereffects of Covid-19. I had mild chronic fatigue before it and still do. I think I am stuck with that, so I have to build in rest and quiet time. At least, physical quiet time. My brain doesn’t really do quiet, but that is ok.

Hooray for every day and for building the next stage.

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I took the photograph this week from Point Defiance, Mount Tahoma, aka Rainier.

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