Catchup (Part 1)

The past several months have been a wild ride. In April, I thought I would dig in and get better about posting updates, but here I am in October with my next post. It’s not from laziness though.

March and April brought on a few new developments that took our attention. Firstly, I had begun arrangements to work halftime with Byte Networking, a local private IT company to get a bit more experience and variety. I had no clue what I was really in for.

More life-changing than a new job though, was the realization on March 20th, that we would be new parents!  It was mindbending to realize that we only had 9 short months to orchestrate anything and everything needed to become prepared to keep a mini-human alive. We’d have to learn how to help them navigate the world. I had noticed that I started paying close attention to how other parents handled their children and then made mental notes of what I plan to do or not.

And then, on April 4th, we were rocked with the news that Heather had a miscarriage.

There’s not really words to describe the experience. It requires grieving, but it’s somewhat of an abstract idea – in the few short weeks, while our supply of baby related items had ballooned, there was no tangible evidence of a new child. I’m positive it was harder for Heather to experience the miscarriage first hand, but even my worldview was affected.

For instance, in our brand new pregnancy, we had fashioned a list of important people that we wanted to share with. Calls and visits were made, and the list was checked off. It was early, so we didn’t want to spread the news far and wide because we do enjoy our privacy. So, after hours of crying and coming to terms with the miscarriage, we then had to walk back through the list and let folks know… And experience the emotional loss all over again. Weird to have those feelings re-run over and over.

We were able to move on, and I got into the throes of working two jobs. UAS remained the known entity, but Byte turned into a much bigger fish. Somehow I happened to land myself in a world of turmoil. The ownership of the company was changing hands. They had been short-staffed for several months. Clients were unhappy with service levels and communication. And I’m no slackard when it comes to helping. It seemed to be a magic soup of insanity.

So April happened: starting a new job, traveling to functions, processing the loss in the family. May was a blur too. Much of the same, but add in my re-engaging of photography. In the month of May, I was out with my camera 16 different times. Likely as a way to help me process the experience of the miscarriage, but also with 9 of those being images for other people… Needless to say, it hasn’t been a relaxing schedule.

It’s hard to recap everything and keep it concise. There’s so much more throughout the summer. I guess you’ll have to stick around for part two, coming sometime in the future. Let’s hope it’s not 6 months out, right?

-cb