We now return you to your regularly scheduled grieving

After I posted early this afternoon, I spent some time on the Discord chat server for the widowers subreddit; those folks have been a phenomenal source of support over the past eight weeks. Then, I read the next two chapters of The Grief Recovery Handbook, and I'm committing to getting the first assignment done tomorrow. I've made my to-do list for tomorrow (including meals and a walk). I did some more work on my four-panel painting series. If I were pretentious enough to title my "art", I'd likely call it "Seasons of Our Love." Alas, I'm not pretentious (also: not an artist), so no title it is. When they're finished, I'll post pics. I completed the pre-class writing prompt for the Writing Your Grief course I'm beginning on Monday.

I also unpacked an item that was delivered two days ago. Why the delay in opening it, you ask? Well, folks, that's because I first left it on the porch for 24 hours, then Lysol'd the ever-loving SHIT out of it and left it to dry for another 24 hours. As for the item, remember last week when I had the revelation that the "journey" of grief would be better described as an epic quest akin to Joseph Campbell's monomyth? Well, I want to take a deep dive on that subject, but in order to do that, I probably need to get better acquainted with the monomyth beyond my very rudimentary familiarity with the concept. So I treated myself:

It took me three passes and about fifteen minutes to get through the two-page preface, written by Campbell in 1948. From those two pages alone, I can see that Campbell was a BEAUTIFUL writer: poetic but not flowery, detailed in his research on the subject (which will, no doubt, send me down numerous rabbit holes of additional reading to get a deeper understanding), and able to convey complex ideas in a relatable manner. I can also see that I have 337 pages of some VERY challenging reading ahead of me. That's gonna be interesting given that my intellect flag is not exactly flying high these days.

About my grief "projects"

There will be a lot of writing happening in the next month or so, between my independent work on the Grief Recovery Handbook and what I'll be creating in the Writing Your Grief course. I'll still post here daily, and I may very well share the work that I create in the Writing Your Grief course. But I won't be posting what I write for the Grief Recovery Handbook. I'll likely post about what I discover, learn, decide, etc. But that's work that I'll be doing in a physical notebook, and I'm not about writing exactly the same thing twice.

It's been a productive day. And I have a plan for tomorrow, so I feel good about that. That doesn't mean that I'm okay now. It doesn't mean I want to be here any more than I did earlier today. It just means that I managed to do something useful today.