Lisa Marie Blair

Tag: 2019

  • 098 // Life on Easy Mode

    In a since-deleted tweet, or perhaps it was a since-deleted Tumblr post, I’m not sure and I can’t for the life of me find it now, I read something that changed the way I look at my life. It said something like: “People that have the support of their family/friends really got life on easy mode.”

    My youngest sister, just out of high school and coping with a new job and the confusion of the adult world managed to plan a surprise party for my mom the night before her birthday. We all, despite our pasts, our harsh words and traumas, did what we always do. We came together in forgiveness, compassion, and love determined to make a member among us feel special. There was no bitterness, there were no grudges, and I realize now that there will never be, no matter what.

    I never considered that my life was on “easy mode” in any way, shape, or form but reading that post and juxtaposing it against the love and laughter I experienced tonight I know that in at least one way I kind of do.

    These entries are inspired by Thord D. Hedengren

  • 097 // Sunday Isn’t Enough

    I’ve never been good at Sundays, I’ve always known this, always lamented this, but something has changed. Now, I think, I never want to be good at Sundays. I am fed up. I am giving up on everything Sunday is supposed to be.

    Sundays should not be peaceful days to while away reading, walking, resting with our heads in the clouds or lounging on couches. We should be up in a panic, rushing, worrying, frantically trying to hold on. We should be fighting and wailing against the not just the end of the weekend but against a society in which we are given so little time to rest, to create, to ourselves.

    I don’t want Sundays to be enough to get me through until Friday. I want more.

    These entries are inspired by Thord D. Hedengren

  • 096 // Weather Report

    The days have been warm but spring clouds of doom and gloom hover about. Sunshine bring hope but the depression of winter hasn’t lifted yet. There is a regular chill that blows through the city and on it a feeling of uncertainty rides. Winter still stalks and we’ll see snow by next Thursday. It is that time of year when life must fight to wake up and begin, again and again.

    These entries are inspired by Thord D. Hedengren

  • 095 // The Gift of a Project

    I received a wonderful and thoughtful early birthday gift today. It’s something to do, which I have come to realize are among the best kinds of gifts to get, especially if it is something to make.

    A gift like that is a gift of inspiration and motivation. A gift like that is a gift of accountability and new beginnings.

    Too often we get stuck along our creative journeys because the end goal seems too vague and all roads begin to blend. We’re afraid to choose a path and the longer we wait the more obscure the way becomes. Complete freedom and the option to choose from infinite modes and mediums can paradoxically leave us with no way to proceed. The gift of a project shows a way that can lead us to the way.

    I’ll admit I’m a little overwhelmed and afraid but more than that I am intrigued. I have a lot of ideas floating around already and since this gift comes complete with a deadline and a community built in I feel both eager and supported too. I’m ready to get started right away!

  • 094 // Communing With the Past

    I’ve been criticized for buying the books I read rather than borrowing them, but despite all the good reasons why, this last book reminded me why not.

    I have developed a habit of reading with a pencil, writing in the margins, and, as it feels to me, reading each book as a conversation between the author and me. I read by writing out my own thoughts too.

    I borrowed Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge from my little sister last week and since it wasn’t mine, I couldn’t read it with a pencil the way I normally do. Well, it turns out that the habit had become absolutely crucial to my comprehension. It turns out not being able to write, argue, or think in the margins made it impossible for me to engage with the material on a deeper level.

    Worse yet, I would read something that stuck in my mind and not being able to store it anywhere I could not move past it. I had to resort to taking pictures with my phone and writing notes on scraps of paper just to refocus my attention.

    I’m happy to be done with that book and on to reading a book that belongs to me again, this time Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. I have my pencil sharpened and look forward to communing with the past again.

    These entries are inspired by Thord D. Hedengren

  • 093 // Shifting Perceptions

    Time has been passing and shifting in strange ways lately. It used to be that the days were long but weeks and months flew by before I knew it. Now, the days are short but the weeks and months are dragging. I’m not sure which I prefer but for better or worse a change is refreshing.

    As I am aging, and I do consider myself to be aging now, I worry that there will be less and less change and nothing but more and more monotony to slog through. It’s nice to know that life is a perpetual puberty and my mind and body, as well as my place and perception, will always be changing in ways I cannot understand.

    These entries are inspired by Thord D. Hedengren

  • 092 // Grateful for the Frustration

    The week was going well until I was informed it would inevitably end on a hectic note. A new class of employees is starting and my team and I are needed to train and test them. It’s a bigger class than we’ve had in a while and that means more hours must be given up for the task. Hours I would normally spend reading or writing.

    It’s hard to plan my weeks, make progress on projects, or reach goals when my schedule keeps changing so much, but maybe that’s life. Maybe I’m lucky to have any semblance of a routine to impact in the first place. I suppose there are people whose day-to-day is more chaos than calm every day. I wonder how they cope?

    But, once again what frustrates me also serves to remind me how lucky I am, how far I have come, and how much I have to be grateful for.

    These entries are inspired by Thord D. Hedengren

  • 091 // I Can Move Again

    Starting new medications means trading one set of side effects for another, and this causes the paradoxical condition of both feeling better and feeling worse at the same time.

    My energy has returned, my joints so much feel better, and I’m no longer feeling bloated and heavy from the moment I wake up to the moment I lay down to sleep at night. Instead, though I have rolling headaches and nausea, and sharper pains in the belly that come and go.

    It’s hard to gauge whether one medicine or another leaves you better off or worse but for me and for this medication, the relief from joint pain alone is a godsend. Not only can I move again, but being still is no longer painful either.

    These entries are inspired by Thord D. Hedengren

  • 090 // Sunday Night Rage

    As usual, the weekend flew by too quickly and, of course, I didn’t get to even half of the things I’d hoped. My next chance won’t be for another 5 days now and, at this moment, looking down the long length of those five days, I’m filled with righteous indignation. Five days of every week I must give up and just two are left over for me? Half of which I need to use is in recovering from the five!

    Sunday nights and all the required preparation only remind me how bleak and pitiless this reality really is.

    These entries are inspired by Thord D. Hedengren

  • 089 // Me and Myself

    I’m surprised by how much I’ve come to enjoy my time alone. Of course, I miss my girlfriend, and the dog is here to provide a sense of security, but the silence rather than being unsettling is quite calming and comfortable.

    I used to hate being confined to my thoughts but slowly I’m becoming one of my own favorite people. I’m enjoying my own company and seeing the value in companionship with myself. Me and myself have finally, it seems, come to a place of understanding, non judgement, and embarked on a burgeoning friendship.

    These entries are inspired by Thord D. Hedengren

  • Currently // March 2019: Seeds of Possibility

    Currently // March 2019: Seeds of Possibility

    “March is the Month of Expectation.
    The things we do not know—
    The Persons of prognostication
    Are coming now—
    We try to show becoming firmness— 
    But pompous Joy
    Betrays us, as his first Betrothal
    Betrays a Boy.” 

    ― Emily Dickinson, March is the Month of Expectation

    March has never been a month that carried much weight or meaning for me. There are no birthdays in March. There are no major holidays, or none that I am interested in anyway. The only thing that marks the month for me, is the long-awaited start of spring and the beginning of the part of the year when I feel the happiest and the most free.

    This particular March was much more stressful than most but somehow turned better than most too. My fiance and I accomplished a lot together and I made a lot of progress on my own though not exactly in the ways I’d hoped. It wasn’t a good writing month, but it was a good learning month and a good planning month. I gained confidence in March and began to practice the art of discipline. March was a start, I hope.

    And now it’s time for April, my favorite month of the year. My birthday month and the time when winter’s grip loses its hold, and the air grows friendlier and love buds in our heart as the leaves do on the trees. April is when I was born and constitutes a kind of second New Year for me. It’s when I begin the trip around the sun again and deep and fervent thanks for whatever may come.

    But before I do, here is what I am currently…

    Writing little blog things. I’m still finding my feet here and still trying to figure out how to revive Zen and Pi, but I’m not giving up. I’m still sharing my daily journals, though I have to stop letting the digital replace the physical, and working on drafts book reviews and personal essays. By summer, I’ll be publishing proper long-form blog posts. I’m exploring submitting to other publications again too and making writing my second job rather than something I do when I feel like it. I’m scheduling time rather than waiting for time and working at the hard parts rather than doing what comes easily.

    Making an effort. There are things in my life I have taken for granted and gotten lazy about. My relationships, my goals, my home, my work, and even my health have all been slowly falling into a state of disrepair on account of simple carelessness and fatigue. I’ve let things go and left things half finished telling myself I would come back and when I didn’t I fooled myself by saying there was plenty of time. But when you leave things they do not wait for you to return, they simply fall apart while you are away. Though we may grow weary, there are just some things in life that require a constant effort. Like a heartbeat, if you stop, they die.

    Planning a possible NaNoWriMo project! My last NaNoWriMo attempt failed miserably, and I haven’t had the courage to try again since but this year I’m rethinking not only the genre, topic, and feeling of my project but also intended audience and means of publication. Suddenly more possibilities mean more possible and I want to give myself the best chance by starting now. I want to throw my future self the life jacket she is going to need to stay afloat. I’m taking notes, collecting and cataloging ideas, and keeping an outline in mind.

    Anticipating another awesome birthday month! Most people I know hate their birthdays. They dread them, minimize them, and treat them like any other day, and for the life of me, I cannot understand it! My birthday is the most important day of the year to me because if I had not been born none of the other things in my life would matter. I wouldn’t be here to love, to learn, to hate, to grow, to experience any of it. So I celebrate not just my birth but every year I have been gifted on this planet because there have been so many times I could have left it. This year I’m planning a big dinner with at least 12 friends in addition to the family dinners and a planned “perfect day” with my wife to be.

    Reading Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge and The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson, still. I expect to finish Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race within days, but Emily Dickinson may take the rest of the year or more since I’d like to analyze and understand every poem. I’ve just finished One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez and have to say it was possibly the most beautiful book I have ever read. I had a hard time with it at first but once I chose to trust that Márquez was leading me the right way and that he would reveal the answers to my questions at the right time I had a much easier go. Next on my list is Notes From the Underground and Other Stories by Fyodor Dostoevsky and We the Animals by Justin Torres.

    Watching American Gods on Starz and Barry on HBO in preparation for the new season premiere this weekend. I’m also watching The Magicians, my new guilty pleasure and Grey’s Anatomy my old guilty pleasure I cannot wait to be rid of. Honestly, though for the last few months, I haven’t been in the mood for TV but I know that will very soon change. Many of my favorite shows are returning this month including Game of Thrones, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Killing Eve, and The Chi. My weekends will once again be spent on the couch.

    Learning a lot! I got to attend a conference for work and while I can’t say I learned a ton but I really was inspired and walked away with a lot to think about. I’ve also been making up for lost time starting my New Year’s Resolution to take some Massive Online Open Courses. My goal is to complete 7 for the year and I already have 2 done! Granted, they were short and sweet ones, but I’m already enrolled in 2 longer ones and I’ll start a 3rd next month. To keep track, and to encourage others on their own journey of independent learning I made a new MOOC list page to track all the courses I’m taking and the ones I’ve completed.

    Feeling very tired. March might not have been important, but it sure was busy! We had my brother’s wedding; we made progress in planning our own wedding, and we spent a lot of sleepless nights stressing about both. Some of my family came to visit and my fiance was out of town for nearly a week visiting her’s. I already mentioned the conference plus we had spring break though we both worked through it. The city shut down for 2 days because of a blizzard and my fiance had 2 photography jobs to work and edit for. March was packed and I am in desperate need of rest though my expectations for relief in April are depressingly low.

    Reflecting on this episode of The Partially Examined Life on Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. I had heard the name Hannah Arendt before but I never knew how influential a philosopher and thinker she was. I’m intrigued by her argument not that evil is common in the world, but that each of us is capable of doing great evil for no other reason but that we are stupid, strongly inclined to follow along, and far too eager to please. It’s far easier to fall into committing or enabling cruelties to occur than we are willing to accept and this is why we will go on committing and enabling them. She believes only through acknowledging this weakness can we prevent future mass atrocities from happening.

    Fearing the next election cycle. I know it’s a bit early to be anxious but looking at the scandals rocking the current administration, the unwavering support of the far-right, the ever-widening field on the left, and the rise of hate and violence all over the world, things are starting to just feel bad. I don’t predict the world will end, but I do predict a lot more turmoil and a lot more lives lost. The scary part is when you look at who is being affected and whose lives are being lost you can recognize your own face in their place. I’m afraid, not just of what will happen to me but how my character may be tested too. I’m afraid for my loved ones, and for a future time when we will all be judged by subsequent generations. 

    Hating the American healthcare system. If you’ve been following along, you know that I have struggled through the month of March to change from one medication to another to treat my ulcerative colitis. Because the medication is so expensive I have to apply for financial aid through drug companies, each with a different set of requirements and each with a different procedure for reimbursement. This time I had the added stress of my insurance provider putting a hold on my request so they could decide if they wanted to pay for it and all the while I’m slowly slipping into a flare. I’m happy it’s over, and I know it could have been worse, but I still hated it. It was still frustrating, stressful, and scary. The American healthcare system leaves you feeling powerless, confused, and afraid.

    Loving my fiance. I love her every day of every month but this past month we’ve really had to come together as a team, support each other, push each other, and comfort each other through a lot. I don’t talk about everything here, some stories aren’t mine to tell, but I can tell you that I know I am one of the lucky ones. No matter what life throws at us, no matter how uncertain the world gets, no matter how much we fight amongst ourselves, we know there is somewhere where we are always safe. That love and safety has been crucial to my healing and enriched my life beyond words. 

    Needing nothing but to believe in myself. The more I look at my life the more I see I’ve come quite accidentally to live nearly the life I want and need to live. I am lucky not just to have love, and work, and passion, but to have such small and quiet aspirations that can easily be pursued even if they cannot so be easily achieved. I just need to know I can do it. I need to quiet the doubts, silence the self-hate speech, and stop trying to divine what other people think of me. I have everything I need to be who it is I am trying to be, including the strength. I only need to believe it.

    Hoping that more and more of our schools become places that are welcoming, supportive, and safe for our children. This month I was fortunate enough to attend a presentation on the benefits of moving toward a reflective and restorative based disciplinary system in our schools. Our current disciplinary system doesn’t teach kids to be disciplined adults, it teaches them to be compliant and complicit adults. I want to see more social-emotional training that teaches kids how to process emotions, build relationships, and connect with their communities. I’d love to see more schools, smaller, poorer schools servicing the most vulnerable youth being given the political and financial support they need to teach children not just how to pass tests, but how to live in this world, together.

    So, yeah, all in all, March was a month of many things. It was busier than the two that came before and I have a feeling that while it doesn’t feel like it meant much now, come the end of the year I will look back and see that seeds of possibility were planted here.

    But what about you? How did March treat you? Did winter hold tight til the last? What good did you do? What trials did you meet? Are you excited for April?

    Let me know in the comments.

    The inspiration for these posts comes from Andrea at Create.Share.Love

    Photo by Damiano Baschiera on Unsplash

  • 088 // Disoriented

    I finished Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude today and I have to say, no other book has ever left me feeling so disoriented and wretched (in the best possible way) as this one.

    I was so enthralled by the Buendía family and so ensnared by Marquez’s writing I more than half believed it was all true. Not just the events but the wisdom and the warning of it all. I lived through those one hundred years and witnessed such fascinating and terrible events only to wake up to this reality. What a colossal disappointment in comparison.

    This is both the reward and the agonizing pain of a damn good book.

    These entries are inspired by Thord D. Hedengren

  • 087 // Drab Day

    Today was unremarkable and uneventful.

    Normally when nothing happens time drags on, but today was different. Perhaps those long days are only boring days, much is happening but none of it is what we want to happen. And maybe this unremarkable and uneventful day flew by because what happened coincided perfectly with what I wanted to happen and it just turned out that none of it was particularly grand or compelling.

    I had just the drab day I needed.

    These entries are inspired by Thord D. Hedengren

  • 086 // It Could Be Worse

    I was finally able, after weeks of back and forth with my doctor, my insurance provider, the pharmacy, and the drug company, to get my medication and now I find myself almost too afraid to take it! They really should try to find gentler wording to use in those warning packets they give you the first time, you know?

    I wish I felt comfortable enough to share the outrageous cost of the medication here but I will tell you that after ringing up the bottle the pharmacist simply started at the screen with a look that was equal parts confused and astounded.

    He wouldn’t even speak and only after I told him he was worrying me and asked him to please explain the look on my face did he ask me what I normally paid for the medication. I told him that whatever the cost I wasn’t the one paying; it was the drug company, and he sighed relief on my behalf. When the price came up on the card reader, I understood his shock. Even if it wasn’t my money, it hurt a little to swipe that card.

    No matter what I go through in this shit show of a healthcare system I am constantly reminded that it could be worse. I could have had to pay that price tag with my own money, and in all honestly, that price would have been many times larger if I didn’t have insurance at all.

    I’m frustrated for me but I’m wholeheartedly sorry for those worse off. I hope change comes soon and we all get relief from this cruel and unnecessary bureaucracy.

    These entries are inspired by Thord D. Hedengren