{"id":1832,"date":"2017-10-29T14:08:11","date_gmt":"2017-10-29T18:08:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vg-ford.com\/?p=1832"},"modified":"2017-10-29T14:08:11","modified_gmt":"2017-10-29T18:08:11","slug":"learning-to-live-in-a-new-normal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vg-ford.com\/?p=1832","title":{"rendered":"Learning to live in a new normal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/vg-ford.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/positive-thinking.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-948 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/vg-ford.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/positive-thinking.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"478\" height=\"319\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vg-ford.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/positive-thinking.jpg 478w, https:\/\/vg-ford.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/positive-thinking-150x100.jpg 150w, https:\/\/vg-ford.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/positive-thinking-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 478px) 100vw, 478px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s been a difficult year. I feel like every time I sit down to write something on this blog, it&#8217;s a variation on that theme. I used to not understand how people who had lost someone could keep living in the past. Now, I&#8217;m finding it hard not to stop myself from saying things like &#8220;Oh, Brian would have&#8230;&#8221; or &#8220;I wonder what Brian would have thought of&#8230;&#8221; It&#8217;s like it&#8217;s not even consciously done. He&#8217;s a part of me, more than he&#8217;s ever been.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>At the same time, I&#8217;m finding it hard to deal with my father doing the same thing. I&#8217;m not sure why, except that some of the things he&#8217;s sharing are things I don&#8217;t need to hear. My father&#8217;s filters are pretty much zero, and he doesn&#8217;t seem to understand that I really don&#8217;t want to discuss his and my mother&#8217;s sexual escapades. And before you guys say anything, I&#8217;ve told him this. He forgets on a regular basis.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So I found a caregivers support website this week, and I&#8217;m going to be exploring that over the next few weeks. I&#8217;ve also decided to go out on a limb and try for a new position at work. I&#8217;ve had the interview, and now we&#8217;ll see where it goes. It&#8217;s a change for me. I realized that I&#8217;ve been trying to figure out my new path for a while when the interviewer asked me what I thought I&#8217;d be doing in six months, and I said, &#8220;I don&#8217;t know anymore.&#8221; I&#8217;m not sure what I want to do. I know what I thought I would be doing this year. I know what I had planned on doing in the future. Now it&#8217;s all kind of up in the air.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Two things I do know I&#8217;ll be doing: I&#8217;m going to be a guest at both <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ravencon.com\/\">RavenCon<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/balticon.org\/wp52\/\">BaltiCon<\/a> next year. I have at least one book coming out soon. And there&#8217;s a new Carter&#8217;s Cove story coming in December.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>But after that? Your guess is as good as mine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s been a difficult year. I feel like every time I sit down to write something on this blog, it&#8217;s a variation on that theme. I used to not understand how people who had lost someone could keep living in the past. Now, I&#8217;m finding it hard not to stop myself from saying things like &#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/vg-ford.com\/?p=1832\">>>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,100,23,12,22],"tags":[61,101,67,7,60,66],"class_list":["post-1832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-advent","category-brian","category-goals","category-personal","category-writing","tag-advent","tag-brian","tag-goals","tag-life","tag-personal","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vg-ford.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1832"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vg-ford.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vg-ford.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vg-ford.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vg-ford.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1832"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vg-ford.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1832\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1833,"href":"https:\/\/vg-ford.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1832\/revisions\/1833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vg-ford.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vg-ford.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vg-ford.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}