Here I Go Again

I discontinued this blog when I got offended because a journalist in Alaska who shall be nameless purloined one of my posts and used it against someone I value. It stopped about three-quarters of the way through my first journey to Israel. My

Bedouin Police standing at edge of
Kings Tomb area, Petra, Jordan

readers (few as they were), were left high-and-dry. But now I'm back to finish where I left off.

Since my last post in 2017, our world has changed radically.

I'm no longer working,  hopefully temporarily. I've been holed up at home except for rare and short trips to the store in Oakhurst (always masked and gloved) and one trip to the family farm, 20 miles away, since March 14.

As a loner, isolation was no big deal. The dogs would like me to get a life, and the cat goes about her business as usual. What was really strange was not having someplace to be all day, every day. Strange how I relished my days off from work, when I was working, and they flew by like magic. Today is a different reality. Retirement has never been an option for me. From the beginning I said that not having a job would impact my sanity. The sanity has always been in question, but what I believed would happen, did. I find myself wandering around looking for things to do, while ignoring what I *should* do--like window washing.

After flailing around for a month trying to answer the question What is my purpose in life? I discovered it wasn't beading. I tried to prepare for a craft fair my pard Sunny and I planned to do in November and was bored to tears. I packed up my stuff and cleaned off my beading table. Done. Over.  And the craft fair has now been cancelled.

We, Sunny and I, talked about going back to writing short stories, but neither of us could think of anything we wanted to write and many--if not most--of the short story markets have dried up. In our "youth," 25 years ago, we sold a number of tales to the "confession" market, which has since evaporated.

Reading. Meditation. Walking. Watching videos. All sound like great plans. Except I'm not doing most of them.

• Gardening - a bit
• Rereading Daniel Silva's Gabriel Allon series. I'm on book 10 of 19. His books are worth rereading again and again. Can't wait for his newest, arriving on July 14.
• Watching Israeli TV via Netflix and Prime Video. I tell myself I'm learning Hebrew.
• Watching YouTube videos of places I've been and places I want to go.

The last activity is what sparked the renewal of this blog. For tomorrow, I'm going to finish up my first Israeli journey with a post about Wadi Rum and then commence on the 2018 trip, which I documented on Facebook but will go into more depth here. I'll intersperse the Israel trip posts with places I WANT to see and other random thoughts as they occur.

I found this NPR article this morning (thanks, Nicole Faille) about Petra, the Jordanian site that everyone should visit at least once in their lifetime. Can't imagine what it would be like to be there now with visitors and tradespeople gone.

Here are my posts about my visit to Petra in 2016.

Petra Part 1

Petra Part 2

Petra Part 3 

Petra: The Finale

Please join along, if you feel inclined, and let's explore some exciting adventures together.