Milestone and metamorphosis

My girlfriend*, Cardgrrl, started her "Something Beautiful" blog a year ago today. At the time, she didn't know that it would turn out to be the leading edge of a whole new life and career. But that's just what has come out of it--or, I should say, is coming out of it, as the entire thing is still in the early, emergent stages, and exactly what it will become when in full bloom remains to be seen.

Though she hasn't talked about this publicly, the process has been a difficult, painful upheaval, not unlike, I should think, giving birth. That's why I take this occasion not just to mark the passage of a date on the calendar, but to marvel at the energy that she has invested into both a burst of artistic creativity and the germ of an associated new business venture (to be revealed later, in her own good time). I know from personal experience how difficult it is to realize and admit to yourself that one career isn't working, to put an end to it, and to pick yourself up and plop yourself down into an entirely new and different course. For the courage and determination to do that and to make it work, she has my deepest admiration.

Congratulations, my sweet, on passing this marker in the road. I look forward to watching from anear the things that will emerge over the second year of Something Beautiful.



*I know I haven't referred to her publicly with this term before, but y'all didn't really have any doubts, did you? I guess the reason I long hesitated to say anything other than "friend" was, first, just the feeling that the nature of our relationship was nobody's business, and, second, the dread that things wouldn't work out well, and then I'd have to say something about that, with the attendant embarrassment and/or questions, etc.

But as for the first reason, after a certain number of posts about her, and after talking about a certain number of trips across the country for one of us to visit the other, it seems kind of silly to keep being coy about it. As for the second reason, after knowing her for 17 months now, and dating for 15 or so of that, I have no reason to worry that any negative change in status is on the horizon. In one of his few unintentionally funny moments, Woody Allen described his relationship with Soon-Yi Previn, when that was first a public scandal, as a "major, major situation." I think it's safe to say that Cardgrrl and I have a major, major situation, and that we like it. There are, obviously, also major, major challenges, mostly of the logistical variety, the solution to which may require major, major adjustments for one or the other of us at some point. If anything along those lines changes from "thinking about" to "happening," you will, of course, read about it here.