I haven’t blogged for a long time because it’s hard to know what to say. One must be very careful nowadays. The powers that be are out for blood and no one person is too small a target.

I’ve been in the process of circling my wagons. I always had some hazy idea of what I wanted the future to look like, even as I was very aware that you can’t plan that far ahead. I have had to come to terms with the reality that the future will look very different now than the one I had sort of expected.

Of course any time you have to let go of an expectation in order to accept a not-as-nice reality there is a little grieving involved; this is inevitable. The important thing is to move as quickly as you realistically can to acceptance so you can adjust your actions and plans to that reality. Otherwise you’re stuck in an endless waiting-and-hoping game for “things to get better.” Sure, there might be some unexpected improvements, but don’t budget around those.

With all of that in mind I have turned my focus more inward. I have cut out some extraneous things and tightened up my walls. This is not so much preparing for an all-out battle as for a long siege. We’re in it for the long haul. I made some sacrifices and deleted various social media accounts, notably Tw*tter, F*cebook, and my personal Inst*gram accounts. I had a several-years-old M*we account that was largely inactive so I deleted that too. I am on G*b, which, despite the hilariously inaccurate and frothing-at-the-mouth Wikip*dia entry, is a calm, civil place. As usual, I don’t associate with people who make anger their raison d’être, and mostly enjoy posting photos of flowers and skies.

If you look at life as a series of concentric circles, my first small circle is my family. My strongest defenses are there. Next is my parish family. Beyond that I venture only very cautiously, knowing that anything I say or do can be held against me or my family. Free speech has been decimated with the exception of a few spaces not owned by technocrats (like G*b, who have their own servers).

This all sounds so grim. I don’t want to give the impression that I’m sitting around with a black cloud over my head! Life goes on, with all of its usual joys and annoyances. I just shrank my world, is all.

I hope to go on sharing life snap-shots, photography, projects I’m working on, etc. I won’t be discussing events in the world beyond those because it’s no longer safe to do so. Those conversations will continue to be held behind closed doors and we will continue to prepare our children to live and work in this new world of ours. I will continue to use to choose to be happy and to have hope, because our hope is not placed in this temporal life. I encourage you to do the same!