Author: Lisa Marie Blair

Painfully aware. Profoundly afraid. Perpetually falling in and out of love with humanity. She/They.

054 // Wintering

It’s been a biting and bitter cold day, but looking forward through the forecast to next week is keeping me optimistic. Spring is making her first furtive steps toward the front range with warm temperatures and, hopefully, melting these persistent snow mounds for good.

Of course March has always tended or be our snowiest month, so I have doubts as deep as the drifts, but it’s possible, right?

My return to work was rather rough. Besides the cold outside I’m also feeling a little under the weather myself. I suspect a bit of tonsillitis or a bout with my old and familiar nemesis Streptococcus. I took another Covid test thinking I might have actually caught it this time but it was negative again so I went in.

The gloom of missing my wife through her Covid isolation is hanging about too. She’s here, close enough to talk to, to see, to care and feel sorry for, but too far to comfort and find comfort in. It’s hard to hold on to hope what you can’t feel the sun. It’s hard to be grateful with the clouds hanging so low. I’m beginning to lose hope this winter feeling will ever end.

I wish the days felt this long in the Summer. It’s strange how those long hours fly by and the short ones between sunup and sundown drag so. The cold can freeze time too it seems.

053 // Losing Hours

Today is my Sunday and so, I guess you could say I have the Tuesday blues. These hours, though not spent at work, already belong to work. There is nothing I can start for myself because I have to prepare for others. There is nothing I can enjoy because my mind has flown off already exhausted and anxious over the next five days.

It doesn’t help that I rose later than I meant to this morning. The sun warmed me awake early, but I lay in bed stubbornly, defiantly, like a child doing the opposite of what I wanted because it was all I could control. In the end, only I am hurt, and in the end, there is only me to be at times angry with, and at times disappointed in.

Losing a few early hours didn’t used to matter, but more and more, what I’m trading them for feels like a waste. If it were as simple as needing more rest, I may not mind so much, but lately, it’s been me I am fighting with, and I don’t want to fight anymore. I have the time I have and I don’t have the time I don’t. I can’t deny that. I can change it, but I have to accept it first.

This past weekend I’ve also accepted that the apps and algorithms are winning. They are sucking other hours out of my life that I hardly even knew were there before they were gone. So, I’ve set timers for the worst offenders: Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat.

When the timer is up, the app lets me know I have to wait until tomorrow for more content and I am released to reclaim my attention. Some might say it shouldn’t take that, but when you have companies spending more money than you can imagine unlocking all your weaknesses, putting in front of you the content they know you can’t turn away from rather than the content you came to see, it takes more than pure willpower to fight back.

On the flip side, I am also experimenting with the timer for apps I want to be on. Those apps I use for reading books, apps for learning a language, and apps for free courses I want to finish all have timers too and I have to stay on them until the timer is up. This helps me to do the work I want, without getting overly focused on one thing to the detriment of everything else I hoped to accomplish.

It’s mid-evening now and I can feel the time left ticking itself away. I’m choosing to be grateful for the extra time I did have away from work. I’m choosing to do at least three things for me before bedtime: write these words, get past a few chapters of my current reads, and, lastly, make a plan for the hours I’ll have tomorrow—a plan free of excuses and regrets.

052 // Small Joys and Strained Gratitude

I woke up early this morning dreading the grocery shopping, the cleaning, and the caretaking. It’s not that I don’t want to do any of it. I’m actually happy to do it. It feels good to do it. It’s only that I am tired and my brain is so full and stretched so thin that I fear a rip, or small breakdown if I can’t find some small escape.

My wife is feeling a bit better. Technically, her Covid isolation ended yesterday, but she still has to wear a well-fitting mask around others until the end of her 10-day possible infections period. So, to be safe, I’ll spend a few more sleepless nights on the couch.

While at the store, I bought her some donuts and some flowers for her bedside. She was happy to get them and it was nice to put a smile on her face. She’s been so hard on herself for contracting Covid in the first place. She’d been so careful, but one night out in a crowded place where masks were a bit impractical was all it took.

I honestly felt it was bound to happen, and I suspect I’ll have my turn with the virus soon enough. I suspect we all will. The federal response and imposed restrictions were so haphazard and half-assed that we never really had any hope of containment. But that was never really the goal anyway, was it? I think all we really strove to do was keep panic at bay. We wanted the virus to spread as quietly as possible so that capitalism and consumerism would be minimally disrupted.

But the missteps of my government and my own lack of control are too much to bear thinking over for too long. All I can hope for these days are small joys and strained gratitude. My little life is as far as I can comfortably contemplate.

051 // I Got This

We’ve had many warm days these past few weeks, and in typical Colorado fashion, we’ve had some of the coldest and snowiest yet too. Today is one of the many warm ones, but it feels like the first to carry a genuine sense of spring in the air. It’s the first where the warmth did more than comfort. Today’s sun has me up, moving, and motivated.

The usual Sunday chores are underway, but at a much more relaxed pace than usual. The holiday tomorrow means I don’t have to worry about work, and more than that, I took Tuesday off too. All my anxieties are days away, leaving me with a rare Sunday of peace and contentment. A Sunday that belongs fully to me, to right now.

There will be plenty of time for me. My wife is getting through the last of her Covid-19 quarantine and with her stuck in the bedroom and me stuck out here, there isn’t much more I want to do than think, write, and read.

We are grateful that her symptoms are mild, that we have good jobs that offer paid time off, and that I am able, finally, to do more for us than I ever could before. I am well. I have been working on my driving anxiety, and I am happy to take care of her for a change.

I’ve spent almost all my adult life feeling like half a person and a less than adequate partner. It’s refreshing to see the proof of how much I have grown and to see the relief in someone’s eyes when they know they can count on me—that I got this!

Our weekend trip had to be canceled, and I have been on the couch for much of the week, but it’s all okay. Yeah, I’m bored and lonely, and a little worried, but somehow it really wasn’t a terrible weekend at all. I’m looking forward to making up the time together. I’m looking forward to my own bed and sharing responsibilities again. I’m looking forward to knowing, not just hoping, that she will be okay.

Week 04: Fragments and Snatches

This week promises to be another busy one, but not nearly as busy as the last two. The problem really isn’t the workload, but the lack of help I’ve had of late. One coworker is out with an injury and another left for greater opportunities elsewhere. There are still members of my team available, but still fewer to carry the same load, so each has a heavier weight.

This week the load is lot lighter in some ways, and a little heavier in others, but none of it is anything we can’t handle. It helps that I have been practicing preparing myself ahead of time for these weighty weeks. I knew my calendar events would grow dense and I would be more tired and less motivated than usual, so I gave myself permission to use my free time to rest or retreat when needed.

These weeks I am reading, writing, and learning in thought fragments and snatches of time rather than by hours or essays, and it’s ok. I’m ok. When there is more time, I can pick up right where I left off.

In the meantime, this week I will

Wake up 15 minutes earlier. I have been struggling to get up with my alarm and find myself cutting corners in the morning to make up time. I’ve been starting my days with frustration and forgetfulness and wasting hours and energy just to get back on track. I need to do better, but to go from what I have been doing to what I should be doing would mean a 45-minute difference, too much to ask from myself before sunrise. So, just 15 extra minutes this week, please?

Read more. I am proud to have finished two books already this year, but with increased mental strain comes a sharp downturn in my discipline. There have been far more episodes watched than chapters read and I’m disappointed in the disparity. I don’t want to stop watching TV. It’s not rotting my brain, only taking too much time. This week I just need to even out the split.

Keep up with my paper journal and logbook. I had one goal this year, and this was it: document what you did and how you felt. Keep track of what you think and how you change. It’s a small thing that I am convinced will, in time, make a vast difference to how I write. As you do it, though, the act can become mundane and feel unimportant at the moment. You throw the notebooks in a bag and forget. This week I will keep them visible during the day and make time during all those episodes in them every night.

Use my weekend mornings to my advantage. I have been lamenting the lack of time during the week and complaining about the endless obligations during the weekend, but I know there is time enough available. To start, I have Saturday and Sunday mornings entirely to myself. If I could get myself up and get my ass in the chair. There is more, but this could be a start—or a return, rather. Wake up a little earlier and take some time for yourself.

Make my health a higher priority. A busy work schedule makes it too easy to push your basic needs aside. You arrive at your desk and set down your water bottle, your breakfast smoothie, your medications and supplements, and your lunch, and never pick them up again until it’s time to return home. This week, eat when you are hungry, drink water when you aren’t thirsty, and take your medications and supplements at the appropriate times.

This week I will not let fear limit me. I try so hard to be brave every day, but I fail in moments when later I think I might have been able to be strong. I want to practice saying yes when fear is the only reason to say no. The hard part is discerning when that is.

For me, fear always arrives in disguise. Fear pretends to be wise, and I feel foolish to ignore it. There are reasons why something is scary and I have no trouble explaining and convincing myself to avoid what I know I need to do. Even when guilt comes nagging, I say, “Wait until you are stronger, better, smarter. Wait, wait, wait.”

This week, when my first instinct is to say no, I will figure out why. When my mind provides the worst case scenario I’ll then ask, “And what if the worst truly went wrong?” For every reply, ask again all the way down until you have found nothing but your fear standing in the way, do it anyway.

Photo by Katie Doherty on Unsplash