140 // To Wash the Day Away

I’m so tired of this weather.

It was another cold, dark, and dreary day. The clouds rolled in early last night, and the rain—and intermittent snow!—has been falling ever since, will continue to fall through tomorrow, they say.

I’m tired. I’m always tired, I know, but today is something more. It’s all weight on my eyelids and a short temper. It’s a longing for solitude, for warmth, and comfort. It’s simmering rage and offense at the expectation that I should be not just awake, but moving, thinking, and working.

It’s an injustice! A travesty! A personal insult and cruelty!

But I made it through and though tomorrow will be much the same, if not worse, I will make it through that too. For now, there is fried chicken, mashed potatoes, Hawaiian sweet rolls, deep glasses of red wine to wash the day away, and chocolate milk to put us in the mood for sleep.

I’ll let tomorrow stay in tomorrow and sleep well tonight.

P.S. If you haven’t seen the new HBO miniseries Chernobyl, I urge and encourage you to check it out. It’s a heart-wrenching and fascinating dramatization of the tragedy. 

139 // It Builds Up

It was a good day. I accomplished a lot in the morning when my energy levels were boosted by my anxiety. In the afternoon I was disciplined and only allowed myself one TV show before returning to my creativity room to finish some blog things and make a new cut out poem, my first in a long time.

We made breakfast tacos for dinner and paired them with a nice red blend wine. The dinner and wine were supposed to compliment the last episode of Game of Thrones but I enjoyed the food much more than the show. The ending wasn’t bad, just boring.

I should be off to bed now, to get rested and ready for the week, buy I’m stalling. It’s like this every Sunday because I have a hard time letting go of the weekend. What does the work week have to offer that stands any chance against a Sunday of my own. Nothing at all.

If We Were Having Coffee // Better and Worse at Once

Hello dear readers! Happy Sunday and welcome. Thank you for stopping by for a bit of caffeine and catching up.

I’m up early this morning but not as early as I’d wanted to be. I’m up so I can write before the day gets away from me, but I’m not writing as well as I’d like to be either. I’m tired and feeling the pressure of a headache about to arrive. The weather is depressingly grey and I want to go back to bed but there is too much to do for that, so I’m in a bad mood.

Coffee helps though, and so does good conversation, so I’m here hoping to leave better than I came and able to be useful, and productive. So, please, pull up and chair and fill up a cup. Let’s talk about last week.

“She was made mostly of coffee and empty spaces.”

— Adelise M. Cullens, Dead Bunnies Make All Eight Of Me Cry

If we were having coffee, I would tell you that this week was a sunny and cheerful one. The rains of the week before gave way to summer-like sun and heat and every day felt like a Friday, a fact that sounded better than it felt. Perpetual Fridays lead to perpetual disappointment when you realize that you must still keep waking up and going to work the next day.

Still, the cheer was a nice change of pace. Our school year is ending in the coming week and we are all seeing the light, the relief, at the end of the tunnel.

My new office is no longer my fortress of solitude. We are all having to share and squeeze in for the summer as we move from two buildings to one while the main is being renovated. I love people, and my coworkers really can be great but being just to the introverted side of personality types means I get overwhelmed easily and need to retreat into quiet spaces to gather myself and correct my mood.

Unfortunately, it looks like I’ll be out of quiet spaces. I may have to substitute walks around the block on my breaks instead.

If we were having coffee, I would tell you that my job is sending me to another conference this summer. I’m sort of regretting the classes I signed up for because just about everyone else from my department is taking the same classes and I won’t be able to bring anything new to the table. I think tomorrow I might talk to my boss and see if it isn’t too late to change.

I also got the news that I would be teaching a class of new employees on my own for a whole week. I can’t even find the words to express how nerve-wracking this is but I’m kind of looking forward to it too. I’ll have a team to help me out and if all goes well, then…they ‘ll probably ask me to do it again and again. Maybe this isn’t a good thing after all?

If we were having coffee, I would tell you that on Friday night I met with my family and some of our oldest and closest friends to celebrate my youngest sister’s high school graduation.

Her school is a small one, a place for teenagers who have for whatever reason fallen behind and need a calmer, more supportive place to catch up. For this reason, her graduation ceremony was a small one as well. Only some 30 students or so graduated and that meant a quicker and much more intimate and emotional affair.

It was beautiful and seeing my baby sis up there getting her recognition was a beautiful and bittersweet thing. For one, she is the last of us and with her all our childhoods end. The one who is keeping us young is growing up herself.

There’s also my own envy. I didn’t graduate from high school. There was no ceremony, no party, no gifts, and no shining pride from my parents. There was exasperation, disappointment, and resignation. I made my choices. I take responsibility for them as far as I can knowing I was a child with a child’s mind and lacking the support I craved but I wish I’d had what my sister had. A school to give me what I needed and a big sister like me to show the way.

If we were having coffee, I would tell you that wedding planning is getting both better and worse at once and I expect the trend to continue through the big day and I’m just hoping that we get through before both of us snap.

Yesterday we met with our officiant as well and I was able to deliver the bare bones edits of a script I’d put together (and by “put together” I mean “copied from the internet and pasted into a Google document”). She seemed to like it and I’ve given her permission to edit it and add her own words wherever she wanted.

We met with the planner today and I’m so glad I hired her. I worried that since we had already done so much that the added expense wouldn’t be worth it, but just today we walked away with “homework”, or, as I saw it, “a direction”. I’d been feeling lost. I’d been feeling overwhelmed and clueless about how to move forward, and she didn’t just point the way, but she promises to light the path as well.

This week the goal is mostly information sharing. I’m going to organize everything I have already done and try to get it to the planner so she can begin where I have left off. The next goal is music. I had no idea there were so many things I needed to pick songs for! I also need to follow up about my suit, our rings, and a few returns we’ve made, inquire about the ring bearer’s suit, and get the sign maker (my little sister) started on her project.

I have a lot coming up at work, at home, and for the wedding, but I am trying to make time still for reading, writing, and blogging.

It was a bad reading week so we won’t even go there. It was kind of a bad writing week too because I was so easily distracted by the warm weather, my good mood, and my need to be with, talk with, laugh with, people. It was, I think a good blogging week if you take into account “behind the scenes” things. It was a good week for organizing, reviving, designing, and of gathering small sparks and starts.

I’m cleaning up Zen and Pi by taking the more personal posts I’d had over there and hiding them. Part of me wants to take them down and resurrect them here again but another part of me wants to leave this place pristine in its separation from those first attempts just as I am trying to separate myself from what I want Zen and Pi to be, now.

I have a vague idea of the kinds of pieces I want to write there and an even vaguer idea of what my intention and mission is, but it’s growing more concrete and exciting. I’m keeping my expectations small and easy, a bi-weekly schedule for now and no endgame in sight.

There’s no intention to make money, gain notoriety or authority. I’m even moving on from the hope of an eventual book. I just want to write, that’s all. I want to write about what I believe and share it and nothing more, for now.

If we were having coffee, I would tell you that, if I want to have everything ready in time for the big Game of Thrones finale, I had better get going. I’ve got laundry, and dishes, and dinner, and a little cut-and-paste project I’ll post here later if I get around to actually making it, all before I can allow the weekend to end.

I hope that you had a good week. I hope it’s getting warm where you are and spring continues to give you what you need to grow, to bloom, to become what you will be this season.

Thank you for chatting, for being an ear, a shoulder, and a sounding board.

Until next time. 

Written for the #WeekendCoffeeShare link-up hosted by Eclectic Alli.

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

138 // Just Two More Months

Well, I didn’t make the 6:00 AM weekend writing wake up time exactly on the dot, but being only 15 minutes late or so after forgetting to set the alarm entirely is quite an accomplishment and I’ll take it.

This morning I’m posting early because a very busy day is on the way and after it starts, I won’t have any time for me until I’m too tired to think anymore.

Last night we found out there is a place giving discount vaccinations, microchips, and registration for dogs so Lola is going to a surprise vet visit this morning, poor thing. After that we’re going shopping for more wedding things, then meeting with our officiant, who is also my cousin, to discuss the script over coffee, and then well go back out for more wedding shopping.

This week will mark just two more months until our big day. I’m starting to believe the hardest part of marriage is being “almost married”.

P.S. Lola did great getting her shots. She’s quite a nervous dog, and I worried she would bark or whine the whole time, or worse try to bite other dogs or people, but she turned out to be one of the most well behaved of all the dogs there. I’m a very proud fur mom today!

137 // I’m so Proud

Finally, the true Friday has arrived. I’d planned to take the day off from work but I felt guilty knowing I only really needed the afternoon, plus I wanted the extra hours of pay, plus I secretly kind of wanted to be there for our annual end of the year party, so I agreed to come in for half the day.

My little sister, the youngest and last of us all, is graduating from high school tonight. She’s the reason I took off early and the reason I’m feeling so good. I’m proud of her and, I will admit, a little jealous. I’m somewhat jealous of all my younger siblings.

I know in reality they are living their lives the first and only time the same as me, but in my heart, it feels like they are getting the second chance I will never get. They got to learn from me, while I had no one to make my mistakes first. *

I’m so happy for them, but damn does it sting for me.

*Well, I had my parents, but somehow the more we resist them the more we become like them. Parent’s live the nightmare of watching their worst mistakes made again no matter how hard they try to teach, protect, or control their children.

136 // This is a Home

Where the rain of last week made every day a repeat of Monday, this week’s sunshine is giving us perpetual Fridays. I’m not sure which is worse. Mondays are bleak, sure, but having to keep on remembering over and over again that freedom is not, in fact, just hours away is rather more disappointing.

I didn’t write or read as much as I had hoped to and spent too much of the day walking around and socializing, a big change from yesterday’s feeling though by the afternoon I’d had my fill.

I’m happy to be home now with my fiance, our dog, the cat, and, yes, even the snakes.

This is a home.

This is a family.

This is peace.

P.S. I did some more blog things today. I cleaned up the more recent personal posts at Zen and Pi and am preparing to revive it soon and the accompanying newsletter. Now all I have left to do is the actual writing :/

135 // Working Well With Others

I’d gotten too used to solitude at work and now as the end of the year is getting closer and as we begin moving over to our newer, smaller building in preparation for a renovation I am forced suddenly to suffer the presence, the gaze, and the sounds of other people.

I must respond in the appropriate ways to their small talk and their probing personal questions. I have to laugh at their jokes and listen to their complaining and I just…don’t want to. The slightest unplanned or unsought social interaction has become an instant and severe irritation.

To be fair, though, it may not be the people—or how ill acquainted I’ve become with the rigors of working well with others—at all, but simple hormones. I’ll know for sure in the next three day or so.

P.S. I’d like to share my shiny new sign-up page for my new wholly personal “every now and again” newsletter. I’ll write a formal post about it at some point but for now I’m just inviting people with faith to spare to join the list and trust that I will come up with something good to share, eventually.

134 // Reinforced Connections

And suddenly it’s summer. The heat today feels oppressive and the knowledge the worse is yet to come is worrisome. The upside is I can finally get back to taking daily walks which will soon become jogs and will soon after that become my morning runs. The downside is I am sweating and I hate sweating.

Tonight I’m spending time with my family celebrating a belated Mother’s Day. So much must be put off now that the end of the year is approaching and work hours are (paradoxically) extending but I’m glad we made time to be with people we love. I sometimes forget how revitalizing laughter can be, and how the reinforcing connections can strengthen us for the return to life’s chaos and confusion.

133 // An Audiobook Experiment

Today was a good reading day. I finally made it through The Double by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, but I still have to make it through Notes from Underground and the “Other Stories“.

I purchased and began my very first audiobook today as well, Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin. My sisters and my mom all “read” by audiobook and have been trying for a long time to convince me of the method’s virtues, but I know myself and my comprehension cliff dives whenever I am listening to rather than reading words. Hell, I can’t even read well from a screen! Old fashioned ink on paper is the only way for me, I guess.

But! Times are changing and I’m watching the stats of other readers climb to numbers that I know I just cannot attain through traditional means. Plus, Google offered me $5 toward a purchase so I thought, why not give it a try? Perhaps practice is all I need.

I’m enjoying how quickly I can move through “reading” by simply listening, but my habit of reading with a pencil has become another hindrance as well. With audio, I cannot mark the margins, insert my opinion, underline, or argue with the author! I cannot move through a book smoothly without being able to get my thoughts out along the way.

So, I’ve already decided that when I finish I will simply have to buy a physical copy and read it again.

These entries are inspired by Thord D. Hedengren

132 // The Weekend Writing Plan

It was a good writing day, I just wish I’d had more of it to devote to writing rather than to chores.

The goal going forward is to wake up at 6:00 AM on both Saturday and Sunday and give 4 hours completely to writing. If there is anything to do later in the day, that’s fine. I’ll have written for four hours and justified doing anything else at all for the rest of the day. If there is nothing else to do I’ll have hit the ground running and earned a mid-morning nap before beginning again.

These entries are inspired by Thord D. Hedengren