I have been dreading today. The end of Tom’s vacation. He goes back to the city, and I’m alone again.<\/p>\n
We made the best of it. But eventually, he loaded up the car, kissed me goodbye, and blinked his headlights in a final wave as I stood on the porch steps.<\/p>\n
I have been here before. I have set up my defenses.<\/p>\n
Keeping busy: I’m going back to work this week, and that will include\u00a0a few conversations with colleagues. I have phone calls with friends and family set up for every evening. I’ve asked Sara to call me every day, too. And I’ve still got blog entries to catch up on.<\/p>\n
But I don’t want to just be busy. Because being busy is not progress.<\/p>\n
My call tonight was with Kimberly, who’s known me longer than any friend except Dan<\/a>. We talked about the ways that the long recovery from this brain aneurysm could be OK – an opportunity rather than an annoyance.<\/p>\n A time to let my mind drift and explore those fantasies of what I really love to do. To imagine how I could be painting five years from now, Kimberly said – not that I will become a painter, but to explore what that feels like.<\/p>\n I don’t have to solve this dilemma<\/a> in January.<\/p>\n Being alone a lot gives me the\u00a0freedom to just play with possibility. And being in recovery from brain surgery gives me the excuse.<\/p>\n Today’s penny is a 2015. (I don’t think any 2016s have been minted yet.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have been dreading today. The end of Tom’s vacation. He goes back to the city, and I’m alone again. We made the best of it. But eventually, he loaded up the car, kissed me goodbye, and blinked his headlights in a final wave as I stood on the porch steps. I have been here … read more Alone again, part 3<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6375,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[318],"tags":[67,493,529,306,492,526,504],"class_list":["post-6362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-refraction","tag-67","tag-brain","tag-defense","tag-freedom","tag-loneliness","tag-opportunity","tag-recovery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6362"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6378,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6362\/revisions\/6378"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}