Myself putting on a brave face just moments before handing over the keys to the Ark to the woman in the background.
I almost don’t even know where to start with this post. It has been a whopping five years since I did a One Shoe Diaries blog post. I guess I’ll start by saying that I am still photographing Lost Soles. I think it might be a lifetime thing at this point. Even though so many people think of me when they see a shoe out there on the road, since I have not been actively promoting the OSD project like I used to, several friends that I have acquired in the last few years barely know I photograph Lost Soles. To me that seems odd. My identity has been so closely tied to this project, it feels like just a part of who I am.
I have found that I no longer dedicate the Lost Soles to people. Honestly, it started to depress me. We have lost so many people in our lives over the past five years; grief weighs on us daily. I’ve lost my mom. Sharon has lost her sister, her Pops, and her mother. We lost Jack and Jinny. We lost our good friend Ian. Our friends have lost several parents. It’s just been too much.
However, not everything has been a tragedy. We have gotten to travel to Europe on a cruise with friends and traveled to many other great places, visiting with friends and family.
I can’t lie though — the ups and downs of raising a teenager have taken their toll on us. We tend to just survive and not push any boundaries lately.
A recent event that has been really weighing on me is that we sold Nora’s Ark. Getting it ready to sell, then handing over the keys to someone else and watching it drive away, was gut-wrenching. It was time though. Things were breaking down on it, and I just didn’t have the resources, both financially and time-wise, to keep it going. Nora had also outgrown her bed in there. I was also having an ongoing struggle with the City of Pensacola over parking, with it being “stored” on the street. Although I did get a sit-down with the mayor in his office and we reached an agreement. I would no longer make him the ire of the Pensacola social media and news outlets, and he would leave The Ark alone.
I still cannot believe it is gone. I see its empty spot on the street and my heart aches. I have so many great memories tied to The Ark. The final day before it was being picked up, it looked so good inside from my cleaning and panic restorations. I sat one last time at the Ark’s table for my 2 o’clock coffee and fought not to break down, but when Nora came out and sat with me, with tears in her eyes, we both hugged and broke down. That amazing van meant so much to all of us.
Then a few days later, my One Shoe Diaries web server had a fatal error, and I lost my entire site, including all my blogs. Everything from Hurricane Ivan to present day. All my Arkventures were wiped out. Fortunately, through piecing together backups over the years and some help from the Wayback Machine, I got all my entries back. It was then that I realized I had not done a blog post since 2020. And I needed to get an update posted.
I don’t know if I will start posting regularly again or not. Perhaps. I just don’t feel that inspired by life lately. Who knows, maybe I wasn’t blogging because I wasn’t inspired, or I wasn’t inspired because I stopped blogging 🙂