You cannot step in the same river twice.

As I sit here, for the first time in evidently 2.5 years, looking back on this blog and this website, reflecting on the dreams I had when I started this, I realize how much has changed. And simultaneously, how little has changed.

The irony that the last post was entitled ‘Pushing Past Procrastination’ is not lost on me, yet I do not reflect on the last few years as procrastination. They were formative years as a physician, a parent, a wife, a mother, a daughter, a friend, a human…living through a pandemic that seemingly changed almost everything.

Pandemic or not, time does change everything and I am certainly different now. You cannot step in the same river twice. Right? I lived some of the hardest times of my life in the last 3 years, and it has taken a long time to recover, to find myself again, to rekindle some of my past passions. I stopped writing. I stopped reading. I forgot core parts of who I was, and now, am rediscovering who I am.

I am still a lover of words. A once voracious reader who decided my journey back to that deep love had to begin where it did before - with reading. A bucket list goal. 100 books in 2023. As of today, I am at 96/100 books and I know I will accomplish the goal before the ball drops on December 31st. The reading of books reminded me of the girl who read with a flashlight in her bedroom in childhood, an adult who would stay up til dawn to finish a great story, a person who adores bookstores and libraries, and who in all those years of reading, persistently dreamt of writing. It has reminded me of who I am at my core in a very fundamental way.

So, what has changed and what has stayed the same?

I love words, stories, beautiful prose and allegories that stay with you and ensure your river of life is ever evolving into something deeper. Through all of this reading, I certainly learned and found joy, but this process also reignited the desire to write again. To leave my faint footprint in the text of time, even if no one else ever reads the words. That, my friends, is what has stayed the same. I simply had to rediscover it.

Here is to reading, writing, and recognizing who we were, who we are now, and the river that lies between.