In many ways, it seems as though I have been walking in place for the last 18 years.
Of course, that is not true.
Much has happened in my life since I moved back from Bloomington-Normal to Streator in March of 2005.
Most significantly vocation wise, I have had the honor of first working for The Times Newspaper as a reporter from 2009 to 2018, and continue in the role of author of this weekly column.
Being a reporter made me grow exponentially.
While much of what I did was routine newspaper stuff – covering city hall and school board meetings – I also had the opportunity to interview interesting people and experience interesting things.
When you are a reporter, you never know what the day in front of you holds.
If you play that role long enough, eventually you encounter the highest highs and the lowest lows.
Through all of it, your heart, mind and spirit can stretch and grow in ways you never imagined.
Mostly though, writing for the newspaper made me grow more confident in my abilities as a writer. And that might have been the biggest blessing of all.
Working with people with whom you have similar interests and abilities is a gift that many never experience.
And being a reporter is sometimes what I imagine it is like to serve in the trenches together in the military. You bond through covering difficult events, like devastating tornadoes, floods or fires. And elections.
But you also celebrate each other’s victories and professional recognitions.
And in the absence of those, you commiserate and encourage one another.
Which is why it was very difficult to adapt to no longer seeing these co-workers-turned-friends on a daily basis, and chatting over the proverbial water cooler.
And, when we unexpectedly lost a newsroom pillar in editor Mike Murphy last March, we might as well have lost a family member.
Not only did he keep us all on the straight and narrow with our assignments, he also was the social coordinator of the newsroom. And just a fun and interesting guy, who seemed to know a little bit about everything, and never met anyone with whom he couldn’t find a commonality.
When I owned and operated The Wise Old Owl Bookstore in Streator, Murph helped me catalog some of our inventory.
His absence still haunts many of us, even as we remember him with smiles and laughter.
Besides vocational growth, I also have grown spiritually by participating in leadership roles in renewal programs at my parish, becoming a lector and occasionally giving talks when invited to do so.
I have watched as my nieces and nephews have grown from babies and toddlers into young adults. When I first moved home, my youngest nieces were barely 1 year old. Today they are college freshmen.
I watched and cared for my dad as he deteriorated over the course of a year and died three days before Christmas in 2013. The following December, I lost my grandmother, who had been a quiet yet strong model for all of us through decades of joys and sorrows.
And, I have continued to work on my mental health, making huge strides in managing recurring depression by relying less on medicine, and more on developing and maintaining healthy habits and self talk.
Yes, despite what felt like years of inertia, I have come now to this weekend, when I will marry my best friend and turn the page into a new beginning that is much simpler and far better than I could have ever imagined for myself.
Our daily lives can seem excruciatingly monotonous and feel as though they move like molasses in terms of our personal evolution.
But somehow, underneath all of that routine and just outside of our awareness, the rivers of life continue to flow, moving us forward until we find ourselves in an entirely different landscape.
A landscape we will explore with an adventurous spirit despite the monotony it will undoubtedly entail, and which stretches our hearts, minds and spirits in ways we never dreamed.
SPIRIT MATTERS is a weekly column that examines experiences common to the human spirit. Contact Jerrilyn Zavada at jzblue33@yahoo.com to share how you engage your spirit in your life and community.