I got up later than I wanted to but after a late night back home and a restless night of sleep I can’t really be too hard on myself over it.
The goal is to spend the day taking care of myself so I can recover and get back to the schedule I have worked so hard to cultivate these last weeks. So, it’s a lazy Saturday. I’m happy about it but there is a grain of guilt irritating underneath it. I think I should be doing more around the house but none of those projects are what I really want to do. What I want to do is read and write and spend time I know I won’t have again for months and months in my “creativity room”.
And as I always do when I’m caught between doing what I want to do and feeling guilty for not doing what I think I ought to do, I opt for the worst possible choice, to do nothing at all instead. By now my willpower is non-existent and I’m wasting the evening watching movies and playing games on my phone. I know I should get up by my body won’t move without a satisfactory answer to why and “because we should” isn’t at all good enough.
“And,” my body reminds me, “we need the rest. We deserve to tune out and here we have cuddly pets and a loving wife willing to waste the night with you. It isn’t so bad or useless and you say. Life is lived here too, and it is a worthy life. Allow yourself to enjoy it.”
Happy weekend readers! If you’re looking for some interesting things to read, watch, and think about while you kick back and relax, look no further, here are my favorite things from around the web this week:
1. “Remembering some of the artists, innovators and thinkers we lost in the past year.” — The Lives They Lived 2019 // The New York Times
2. “But even if I frame death in that way, I’m still afraid of my experiences being discontinued. I enjoy waking up in the morning and learning things and doing things, and I enjoy thinking, and even sometimes interacting with other people. Death marks the end of that, and it’s the end of that for a long time. Other people will continue having experiences while I do not, and that sucks.” — Talking Through A Fear of Death // LessWrong
3. “The first challenge is casting doubt on the tendency to see personality traits—patterns of behaviour that are stable across time—as parts of our identities that are inevitable and arising from within. While it’s true that people are the products of genes interacting with the environment (the answer to the question ‘Is it nature or nurture?’ is always ‘Yes’)…” — Personality is not only about who but also where you are // Aeon Magazine
4. “Morality begins as a competitive weapon between societies. Now the really interesting question is can we make the jump to universal morality and start to turn non-sentient things into the enemy” —Can universal morality exist? // The Minimalists
5. “What I failed to realise is that in the absence of that empathetic connection, scripts, boundaries and prompts become absolutely essential. If someone is vulnerable for health reasons—physical or mental—because of something going on in their lives or for some other reason, we shouldn’t wait for some grand ethical revolution to give them the time and space they need to preserve their own sense of wellbeing.” — Sometimes you need to put your friends on hold, and I now understand that’s OK // The Guardian
6. “Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that has to do with knowledge how we know things how we come to know things what counts as fact vs opinion. Tribal epistemology was my attempt to capture this phenomenon where a group identity becomes so strong and… once tribalism takes over a group you have what’s called tribal epistemology which is instead of assessing new facts and knowledge based on their correspondence to factual reality or their credibility in the scientific community you accept as true what is good for your tribe.” — Republicans vs. the planet // The Ezra Klein Show
7. “Because the attention schema streamlines the complex noise of calculations and electrochemical signals of our brains into a caricature of mental activity, we falsely believe that our minds are amorphous and nonphysical. The body schema can delude a woman who has lost an arm into thinking that it’s still there, and Graziano argues that the ‘mind’ is like a phantom limb: ‘One is the ghost in the body and the other is the ghost in the head.’” — Do We Have Minds of Our Own? // The New Yorker
8. “As these people’s role in creating a physical and digital world built on surveillance, harassment, and child labor has become more clear, we’ve seen a wave of pseudo apologies for the tools and decisions that got us here. For the past few years, the men (and it’s almost entirely men) who built this digital hellscape have been on a veritable atonement tour.” — The Architects of Our Digital Hellscape are Very Sorry // WIRED
9. “A 16-month investigation by Searchlight New Mexico has found that when it comes to human trafficking, indigenous women and girls are the least recognized and least protected population in a state that has long struggled to address the issue. An almost total lack of protocols, mandated training, and coordination between law enforcement systems as well as medical institutions has ensnared victims in cycles of exploitation.” — Stolen and Erased // Searchlight New Mexico
10. “Paris Opera dancers perform in front of the Palais Garnier, protesting against the French government’s plan to overhaul the country’s retirement system, in Paris, on December 24, 2019.” — Photos of the Week // The Atlantic
Have you read, watched, or written an interesting or inspiring thing this week? Has something on the internet made you feel strongly, think deeply, or see the world in a new light? If so, drop a link in the comments, we’d love to check it out!
This morning started out slow. I didn’t get the best night’s sleep last night and part of me tried to negotiate me out of going into work but I knew if I just fought through it, faked it until I made it, and focused on how good I would feel after going in, doing what need to be done, and then starting the weekend guilt free, I would be just fine.
Since then I have alternated work with writing, stayed hydrated, kept moving, and consumed copious amounts of coffee. I’m feeling good at the moment and savoring every second.
The good feeling didn’t last long. I crashed hard as the caffeine wore off and after lunch my poor body could take no more. I slept for over an hour on the couch. I needed it though and now I feel rested and ready again to venture back out into the world.
Tonight is date night. We have movie gift cards to spend from the holidays and I have been waiting a long time to see the Uncut Gems. I’ve loved every movie I have seen from A24 and from the trailer it looks like Adam Sandler plays the hell out of this lead role.
The temperatures have plummeted outside and I can see fog forming around us under the streetlights. It will start snowing soon but no one seems to mind. The streets are still packed and the first restaurant we tried had a line too long for us to wait. It’s ok though. One of our favorite restaurants moved even closer to the movie theater, just a block’s worth of walking away.
We’re having bar bites and wine for dinner and for dessert we’re looking at the holiday cocktail menu and an order of churros to share. It’s going to be a frigid walk back the car in a few hours but for now, winter is nice.
“…we need to transform the way in which we value water. We have to start to think about how do we connect to water. Usually, someone might ask you, “What is water?” and you would respond with “Rain, ocean, lake, river, H20, liquid.” You might even understand the sacred essentiality of water and say that water is life. But what if I asked you, instead, ‘Who is water?’ In the same way that I might ask you, ‘Who is your grandmother?’ ‘Who is your sister?’ That type of orientation fundamentally transforms the way in which we think about water, transforms the way in which we make decisions about how we might protect water, protect it in the way that you would protect your grandmother, your mother, your sister, your aunties. That is the type of transformation that we need if we are going to address the many water crises we see in our world today, these harrowing water crises that have streamed across our digital devices in countdowns to Day Zero, the point at which municipal water supplies are shut off. ”
“So…what are you going to do about it? What are you going to do for the water? Well, you can call your local politician. You can go to a town meeting. You can advocate for granting legal personhood to water. You can be like the residents of the city of Toledo and build from the grass roots, and craft your own legislation if the politicians won’t write it, recognizing legal personality of water. You can learn about the Indigenous lands and waters that you now occupy and the Indigenous legal systems that still govern them. And most of all, you can connect to water. You can restore that connection. Go to the water closest to your home, and find out why it is threatened. But most of all, if you do anything, I ask that you make a promise to yourself, that each day, you will ask, “What have I done for the water today?” If we are able to fulfill that promise, I believe we can create a bold and brilliant world where future generations are able to form the same relationship to water that we have been privileged to have, where all communities of human and nonhuman relations have water to live, because water is life.”
I’m back at work bright and early this morning. I wasn’t sure I was going to make it since my body was slow to cope and cooperate. I was up some overnight dealing with pain and discomfort but after such a heavy meal last night and a lower dose of steroids I really thought I’d be much, much worse off.
I’m learning to consider it a good thing when my body wakes me up so early these days. I’m learning to listen when my body says it needs more time to move more slowly in. Since accepting this I’ve had a much easier time of things.
I wanted to take the day off, or better yet the entire two weeks, the same as everyone else, but I have work and money to make up so here I am. At least the work is easy and for the most part I’m being left alone. I can make time for my own personal pursuits in between tasks and since I have even less scheduled to get done tomorrow, the option is open to start the weekend early if I choose to.
I was up before the sun again but my wife joined me shortly after so we could Facetime the nieces and nephews and watch them open their gifts together and then head to brunch at my mother’s house to open gifts with our in town family.
As much as I love my family and enjoy giving and sharing joy with them, I’m looking forward to a quiet Christmas dinner just the two of us. We’re cooking together, our new holiday tradition. On the menu is lamb again, like on Thanksgiving, but this time with a new recipe, mashed potatoes, roasted vegetables, lots of wine, and a raspberry mousse cake for dessert. I’m very excited.
But until then I’ll have to feign the holiday spirit. I’m not feeling well still and Christmas day has always been a holiday tinged with some anxiety and sadness for me. Coming from a broken home and a dysfunctional family meant missing the family that couldn’t be there and fighting with the family that was. Coming from poverty meant feeling guilt for whatever gifts you got and shame for your angry over what you didn’t.
Of course, life it different now, but our childhood selves never leave and they never grow and we carry their pain with us too. To that little girl in me: I’m sorry. It gets better. I’m here and this Christmas will be better than one you ever knew with love and warmth and safety. Merry Christmas. I love you.
I’ve gotten up before the sunrise without an alarm or threat of a work every morning since last Friday now. I miss the feeling of luxury that comes with sleeping in but having the house to myself and a few extra hours to create in have been really nice too.
It’s Christmas Eve today and even though I was able to muster up the holiday spirit just in time, holding on to it is proving difficult. I’m just so tired and still dealing with the pain and frustration of chronic illness. At least I will get some time to rest before our celebrations begin later. I’m hoping that through enough medication, napping, and caffeine I’ll be able to hold on to all that cheer through the next couple of days.
My wife made a nice breakfast with homemade biscuits, eggs, and bacon. We watched a few Christmas movies and around midmorning fell asleep together with the dog and the cat on the couch. It’s been a long time since I’ve napped so peacefully. Another luxury.
We spent the evening with my in-laws eating too much Italian food and drinking too much wine. I broke my promise to myself and over did everything. My stomach has been protesting for hours. It was a good time though and I don’t regret a thing. I loved our gifts and I think our gifts for others were well liked and appreciated. I’m almost sad that the holiday is nearly over, almost. There was so much more I wanted to do and give, that’s all, though I supposed the time for doing and giving doesn’t have to end with Christmas, does it?
I can hardly believe it’s Monday already, just two days until Christmas, and just over a week until the new year. My wife and I have just a few small odds and ends left to buy, a couple of small gifts but mostly food and drinks. There’s bacon and eggs for Christmas Eve breakfast, salad, wine, and dessert for Christmas Eve dinner, sausage and mimosas for Christmas brunch, and we’ve settled on lamb for Christmas dinner.
Had a chat with the doctor this morning. It wasn’t great news, but it wasn’t the worst conversation you could have with a doctor either. She’s doing her best and just asking me to hang in there. She’s talking about adding more medications and the one’s she’s mentioned seem to have some very harsh side effects. I’m scared and, to be honest, angry. I’m not angry at the doctor and I know it’s wrong to be angry at myself, but I’m angry all the same. I just don’t know where to point the emotion or how to express or how to let it go.
I probably need time. I need to process. Thank God for my support groups. I’m never alone there. I can search for others going through what I am. I can distract myself from my problems by reading about problems different from my own. I can even uplift myself by offering advice to those in need. That is when I feel the best, when I am helping. My holiday isn’t what I hoped it would be, but I’ve still been able to find the spirit.
Lisa Marie Blair 