It has been nearly a year since I’ve posted here. I’m pretty sure you’ve read that sentence from me many times in the past, but life has been lifing it up. I’ve been busy.
This month I lost a dear friend. Brian Fugett was an editor, artist, playwright, and all around fun guy. I knew him for 19 years. I worked alongside him, spent time with his kids, and learned more than I ever thanked him for in my writing career.
This return to blogging is in part his fault. The last year has been both wonderful and full of accidents. I’m madly in love with my boyfriend (still) and we have been learning how to co-exist as we have very different mindsets on how things should be done. I’ve been learning the art of compromise and the art of letting go of control. We have built gardens together, traveled, and adopted a cat together named Willy Waffles. She’s a pistol.
A lot of my concentration had moved to art and gardening, to being a part of a women’s group as well as being more involved and in tune with my community. Laced in there have been small accidents like being mauled by my cat accidentally, cutting the tips of 2 fingers off, falling almost breaking a wrist. The list sort of goes on.
I was diagnosed with diabetes at the beginning of 2024 and basically radicalized my life. I was on medication for a short time but now managing my sugar with diet and exercise. It was challenging. I had never been good at sticking with diets and always felt cheated, but diabetes was the one thing that secretly scare the shit out of me. When it came knocking, I had to do something. All the exercise and lifestyle changes took all of my free time. Writing sort of fell to the side of the road.
Writing poetry has been in my bones since I was 10 and I have felt its absence, and from time to time, I could squeak out a poem or two but nothing like I had in the past. I felt something missing from my life. In all of this time I was also actively healing past traumas and undoing all the rules and regulations of life that someone else chose for me. I’m learning who I am one day at a time. I’m not feeling bad about changing my mind as circumstances change. This is actually how it’s supposed to be.
This all leads back to Brian. I had really thought I might give up on writing and publishing because I had been out of the game for so long. His sudden death reminded me that giving up is not an option. There is more in me to give. More avenues and ideas to explore. Adventures in writing to find. We have this one life in this particular body to do and to learn all that we can. Brian was great about that. He liked to push boundaries, to find the meaning in people and ideas, and I know he wouldn’t want me to just slowly disappear.
As you can tell I have rebranded this blog. It will be less about writing achievements and more about life and what I am learning. It will have some art, community events, things I’m learning, recipes I love, and probably a lot of pictures of nature. This is who I am now. A middle aged woman on the verge of menopause, full of neurodiversity, feeling more alive and present than I ever have in my life. So let’s go on a journey together. Let’s see what we find. Thanks Brian for the push, for always allowing me to color outside the lines without fear. I will miss you.
Be kind to each other. Read. Write. Make art. Play in the dirt. Say hi to people. Support the small press and local artists. Don’t forget to love yourself.
Aleathia
Aleathia Drehmer 