All The Things That Were Not Me.

This last Saturday made me wonder who I’d become.
My friend Angie was in town, and rather than seeing a movie, we opted to go team up with my daughter Erin to go paint my arcade cabinet, because that sounded like more fun.  So we spent the afternoon outside, painting and then waiting for the paint to dry for the next coat, eating raspberries picked from our bush while we watched the bees hum and work.  Erin made a fire and showed off her hula hoop skills.  Gini did some gardening.
I am not who I was.
I don’t know if I’ll continue to work on crafts projects, or if the lustre will fade like webcomics and I’ll not return.  But I thought about all the things that recent blog-readers would identify as uniquely me, and I can pinpoint their start in the last five years:

• The pretty pretty princess nails? Started in March last year.
• The snazzy hats? December 5, 2010.
• The beekeeping? February 24, 2011.
• Hell, the polyamory? We weren’t even poly seven years ago, and we only came out officially as poly on February 13th, 2009.

And speaking of Clarion, I was a writer before that, but my attempts to be professional were pretty stunted, and had no serious basis in reality.  The Ferrett Who Publishes Short Stories didn’t effectively exist before August of 2008.
This mutation makes me deeply, deeply happy.  I’ll be turning 44 this week – mark the date, as July 3rd is the most important day of the year – and I’m still greatly in flux.  I don’t want to be one of those old men walking worn paths, doing the same thing he always was.  So much of the goodness in my life comes from an influx of new activities, new learning, new risks to take.  I look back over the last decade and the Ferrett of 2003 would barely comprehend the Ferrett of Today – and that’s such a good thing, in the same sense that Teenaged Ferrett shouldn’t have a real solid grip on the Mid-Twenties Ferrett.  It shows I’m growing.  It hopes I’m learning.
I’m living at the speed of life, and all the things I am and might be are still negotiable.  This is a happy way to begin my birthday week – surrounded by loved ones, covered in fresh black paint, working on something that didn’t exist a week ago.
The cabinet is built, as am I, with a little help from my beloveds.