I’m tired from all that’s going on right now. (Fatigue is how fellow WP blogger Stephen Black put it.) So, I’m stopping along the way. I have come to a resting space on the side of my path and I’m going to sit here for a while. I’ll sit, rest and reflect.

My journey (and this blog) was supposed to be about exploring what the second half of life looks like. All was going well until the pandemic hit. In the five months since then I’ve been traveling in circles from fear to anxiety to boredom and back. While the country has largely reopened, I’ve been spinning in my own high risk Phase I. So, I’m going to stop. I’ve been so busy worrying about everything (including my sanity) that I haven’t thought to use my confinement to consider how substantially life is impacted by the coronavirus. I’m going to quiet myself and contemplate. It’ll be my Phase II. What better time to examine my motivations, convictions and intentions than now?

• Am I seeing everything differently now than I did pre-pandemic; my community, my relationships, myself?
• Is my fear of death from COVID-19 overblown because of the trauma I’ve experienced from losing dear ones to disease?
• Does that fear run counter to my belief system?
• Did I appreciate my pre-pandemic life by fully participating or was I mostly observing as I’m forced to do now?
• Will I act more intentionally within our global community after this time of solitude, once a vaccine is developed and I move along again?

I’ll sit here with these questions for a while. I don’t need immediate answers. It’s enough for me to ask and think about them. I’m grateful that I can! The effect to this blog will probably be less humor and some posts might be reflective fiction, poetry or entries from my gratitude journal. I’m hoping that sitting with challenging questions might provide some spiritual growth and maturity. I wonder what Phase III will look like.