I haven’t written much lately. More of I haven’t written at all. These days I feel like I’m on a state of suspended animation. Morning comes, I wake up, make my coffee, check my email, check my pages, get ready, do what it is I have to do for the day and go home. Blah blah blah. No matter how my afternoon went, how exciting and fun it was, my day just ends grey, dreary and flat. Why? Basti is on vacation. 
He’s been gone in the last two weeks, visiting the Cebu relatives in their little corner of Eastern Cebu. He’s having the time of his life. I’ve called his vacation the “Tunay Na Lalake” vacation because he’s been doing all sorts of things he can never do here in the city.
He’s feeding goats and chickens, washing the car, fetching water at the water pump, taking walks by the river and the sea, and sleeping in a nipa hut. He’s also got more cousins than he can count (because he can only count up to twenty right now) so everyday is a party.
While I’ve been enjoying my Me Time, I’m also missing him terribly. He doesn’t come back for a few days and honestly, I’ve had enough Me Time, I want my little bugger back. This house is just too empty without him.
Before Basti left, I had all sorts of stuff lined up. I was going to organize, and top of the list, I was going to blog. Sometime in the last few months, I lost my blogging mojo and my blogging voice, and I’ve been struggling to find it again. I thought I would find it while Basti is gone. I thought I would have the time and the silence to really give the blog some thought and think about what it was then, what it is now and where I want it to go. I am not succeeding.
What I do know is that with Basti gone, a part of me left with him. What I did realize that finding my voice will always and forever include his. That is the mother I am, and Basti’s presence in my life is part of what defines me. I didn’t know it, but my blogging mojo never left. My blogging mojo was always there. Basti is my blogging mojo. And it took a vacation to make me realize that.
The Painter’s Wife is on its last legs. We’ve had a good run, this blog and I. But it’s time to move on. I do have a new website in the works. I’ll announce it soon, and hopefully I’ll have lots of stuff to share to celebrate its launch.
Do any of you want to guess what it’s going to be like?
