It’s been a while yall. So much has gone on with me, so I can only imagine all that you have endured in the last 2-3 years. Can you believe we have literally gone through a WHOLE pandemic??? Like literally people. We are approaching the OTHER side of this thing! 

Commercial break (Ha! Can you believe I just said commercial break and I’m just getting started??? Well I did!). So here you go. Ahem (clears my throat) I care NOT what side of the coin you are on with this thing. Remember, I don’t do politics. And truth be told, neither do you. Sometimes we just like to hear ourselves talk about a bunch of stuff we really know NOTHING about. So let’s just get that out of the way. Whether you believe in the pandemic or NOT…one thing that doesn’t lie, are the grieving families left behind as a result of it. Doesn’t matter what caused it, so many people have been negatively affected by it. Mask or not, vaccine or not…people didn’t just die because they wanted to. Whether the media covers it or not, we went through a pandemic in THIS life. That we can’t deny.

Commercial break over. 

Screaming: THE WORLD IS BACK OPEN YALL!!!!!

And we are still here. I’m blessed to say that despite the devastation that has taken place in the last couple of years, my family is better because of it. Despite it all, we all can say (if we take a moment to really think about it), we are a little better for it. My family is stronger. We are closer and we know each other a little better. Pastor Steven Furtick (love him) often preaches and I’m paraphrasing a little, “God didn’t cause it. He didn’t stop it. But He can use it for our good!”

The first full year of school after covid arrived on the scene, my kids stayed home from school. They were in the 2nd (my daughter) and 4th grade (my son). Truth be told, I did not homeschool them, they simply went to school…virtually. And I must brag, their teachers were GREAT. Hats off to all of the teachers. James and I were both full-time teleworking from home. James worked upstairs and I went to work downstairs in our basement. The kids’ classroom was in the basement as well. Their playroom was turned into a classroom, playroom, slash gym. (Did I really say slash? Lordt).

For a whole school year, we did life together at home. I never signed up to be a ‘stay-at-home’ mom, yet for a whole year that’s what I was. That’s what many of  you were too. And so fellas, that made you a ‘stay-at-home’ dad! (Hands over your mouth GASP). Now who would’ve ever thunk that one (yes, thunk…who would’ve thunk it)??? Mostly, none of us would’ve given ourselves those titles, but we were afforded those opportunities due to our environment. And truth be told, many of us eventually began to love working from home. 

As a manager, many of us never really liked the idea of our employees teleworking but we eventually all got used to it and many of us, even today, prefer the idea of working from home. I’ll be the first to admit it, I wasn’t a fan but I do still enjoy the option of teleworking. My organization has transitioned us back into the office 2-3 days a week. I still like not having to worry about getting dressed in the mornings; but at the same time, I do like getting out of the house and seeing other humans. Working from home is cool, but I don’t want to be home for the rest of my life. Many people are now wanting to work remotely. Good luck with that. Mentally, it’s not good for us to be isolated like this (I’ll surely speak more on this later as it’s a DEEP subject). But think about the blessing it was for us to be with our family, like really be with them. Wow, I still can’t believe how that happened. Through the devastation…yall Imma (I’m going to) have to put that in a separate blog or I’ll be blogging for days! 

So much has changed in our lives, but here we are. We’ve learned how to navigate into a new normal, but here we are. It’s different, yet still a bit satisfying. Here we are. For me, as many of you know, I stopped blogging because there was nothing and I mean, absolutely nothing to draw from. Life sort of stopped outside of our homes. We weren’t around people. And essentially, I blogged about life with people. My blogs focused on giving us different perspectives, but if i wasn’t around people, where were these perspectives coming from? It couldn’t just come from social media because oftentimes, what we shared…wasn’t the whole truth. Social media only gives us glimpses. But being in person, so much of people, we can’t hide. It’s hard to hide who we really are versus whom we want people to see, through us smiling on que for pictures and our overly confident keystrokes.

So I lost myself. I lost my creativity. But now, the world has reopened. We are getting out more. We are interacting more and more together. We are looking into each other’s eyes (and mouths). We are reading body language again. We are seeing through the facades now. We are seeing people and ‘seeing’ people. With that, I’m able to get glimpses into who we are again. I’m able to see these perspectives more clearly now. And now it’s time to start back journaling out loud in this thing called life. I hope you all are ready. Because. She’s baaaaacccckkkk.

Still, her own competition.

Competition of 1