Like many of you the most recent pandemic has been very difficult for me. I learned a lot about myself, most of which is that I was not prepared to live though a pandemic. During this time, I often found that I was keeping myself busy. During times like this I often learn something new and continue to work through older things I’ve learned. Basically, I pick up hobbies. I did find however, that through quarantine I struggled with my depression and anxiety. And just in case you are curious, I don’t bare shame about my depression and anxiety. In fact, I am open about them. I choose, as a minister and all-around human being, to be open about them because of social stigma around mental health. Mental health is no different than any other health issue, in fact the refusal to practice self-care around mental health exacerbates other issues you may have. But that isn’t the topic I have chosen for today.

As a religious person, I try to practice spirituality, you might have heard this called spiritual practice. One of the ways I do this is through living authentically. Jean-Paul Sartre once said, “My life and my philosophy are one and the same.” When I consider spiritual practice, I think of Brother Lawrence and Saint Therese Lafleur. I think of my life lived as spiritual practice, also what makes me feel alive. The biggest thing that helps me through difficult time is throwing myself into something I’ve never done and learning a moderate proficiency in it. Often these are the things I post about in my blogs. The problem is that during the pandemic I started to learn a lot of different things, and the one thing I didn’t feel like was processing those things spiritually.

I had plans, during the pandemic do write about my Commodore 64, but before I could I started baking. I actually prepared some articles on the baking but before them I threw myself into a live action role playing game called “Call of Cthulhu.” I was considering an article on that, when I began to work on my ham radio license.

While all this was happening, I lost two canine members of the family, you may have seen my post about Princess, two weeks later we lost our friend Gizmo, he was a shock, his death broke me. Oh and there was work, adapting the church to a fully online model took a lot of time. I no longer just though about how to have a service, but how to do it livestreaming and archiving legally.

However, having said all of that, I hope to still add posts about bread baking, my Commodore 64, RPG, Ham Radio, spirituality, and even my friend Gizmo. I am beginning to feel renewed, let’s hope for a while.