Opening the other door

I've been feeling a great surge of energy with the coming of Spring. Even the advent of miserable allergies can't dent that feeling of wanting to and being able to move forward.

One of the things that's changed is that I'm participating in one secret and one closed group on Facebook. The secret group is related to the grief writing course I'm taking. The other is an accountability group for writers, where we each check in each day to talk about whether we've met our goals for that day.

Both of them have gotten me writing again, and focused on my writing projects again. After the depression and grief of the winter, after being trapped in those dark feelings, the feeling of openness I'm living with now is an amazing relief.

One other thing that's changed is that I just finished an amazing blogging course, which has inspired me to try and breathe new life into this blog. I know I'll never be an every day blogger, but I'd like to write more here, so that's my goal.

Let's see how I do, now that the other door is open.

Lost voices

I've been spending a lot of time this week thinking about how sad it makes me that Jay's voice has been silenced, both in the literal sense of never hearing him speak to me again, and in the metaphorical sense of him never creating new stories. This line of thought has driven me to tears again and again.

Last night, I was enjoying listening to music. I started out shuffling Rush on my iPod, then was seized by a desire to listen to Big Country, who I haven't listened to in  quite a while. And I was enjoying myself quite nicely, until I realized that I was listening to another lost voice. The band's singer committed suicide in 2001 (see my post here for previous thoughts on this).

Sitting on the sofa, I burst into tears.

So here am I, grieving for all the lost voices in the world.