Tag: April 2020

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Today is the first day of the rest of my life. It’s been a long time since I’ve thought of that phase and this is the first time I’ve felt it ever seriously applied to me. 35 already feels different. For the first time I feel old. I know I’m not old but this is the first time I feel that I am not young and in my inexperience they seem the same.

This morning my wife made me a big breakfast, and afterward there were mimosas and gifts. She went all out this year. I got a cold-brew coffee maker, a Scrimshaw knife kit, a box of “Strike Your Fancy” matches, and a big, beautiful longboard! Apparently, there is still one more gift, but it hasn’t shipped yet and she won’t tell me what it is. I just have to wait until the world starts moving again to find out. FOr now I’m hanging out, watching my favorite shows and waiting until it’s time to roast the artichokes, steam the cran legs, and open the wine. It’s a good day despite everything that’s going on around us.

I got an email from Coursera about some courses I might be interested in. One is Memoir and Personal Essay: Managing Your Relationship with the Reader and I’m really thinking about doing it. I need a long term learning goal I can work toward during these next three or four months away from work. There were courses I’ve been enrolled in and have been struggling to finish for nearly a year or more, but rather than wasting time avoiding or forcing myself to do the work, I have decided to embrace quitting. I’m quitting them (for now at least) and moving on to things I feel excited and passionate about.

There’s another one I heard about during a Sam Harris interview with Laurie Santos, “an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at Yale University”. Her course, The Science of Well-Being is not only the most popular course at Yale but also on all of Coursera. I think I’ll give it a go too.

So, I have new things and new goals. I have renewed resolve and a new direction. I’ve taken a tiny step and it feel good. It feels right.

Goals // Week 16: Another One Around the Sun

This week is a new beginning of sorts, one of many that come every year. It feels right that my 35th year of life should begin on a Monday, though for the last month Mondays have meant very little. Still, Mondays are our chances to start again every week and this Monday I get to start the first week of a new trip around the sun. I’m excited, but it’s a somber and focused kind of excitement. I’m starting a new chapter but I’d like to write a little more of this one myself rather than simply reading along waiting for the plot to unravel and the twists to surprise me.

So, this week, the first week, I will:

Write one blog post every day. I’d like for them to coincide with the WordPress Discover Prompts but I’m utterly incapable of writing anything short and that means some pieces can’t be wrapped up before the sun goes down. So, if I can’t finish a post before the day is up, I give myself permission to save it as a draft and pick it up again later. I am committed to sharing something for each day of April, even if it must come late. The point is to make a real effort, to get up and try. That’s all.

Read a little every day. With so much writing in the schedule now there will be less time for reading but I have finished the longest book of my entire reading career and can confidently move on to regular sized novels and my Penguin Little Black Classics set of which each book hardly exceeds 50 pages. Bonus: Finish this list of Feminist Writing.

Get back to regularly updating my to-do list, logbook, and schedule. Time seems to be compressing in on each side of the present and the days are harder to remember and to plan. I need a schedule to orient myself, to get a hold of time, to get things done, to remember how I want to live, and in order to do that I have to take the time to sit down and map out not just what is to come but what has passed too. To give my mind proof that though time is always slip, slip, slipping away I can make use of it as it passes.

 Enjoy my birthday. Being stuck inside during a global pandemic and a snowstorm is not the ideal way to spend a birthday but it is what it is and there is still so much to be grateful for and to celebrate. My wife, my best friend, my partner, is right here with me and there has never been an end to the joy we’ve been able to find in one another. It’ll be a good day if I decide that it is and what I have is not only good enough but a great blessing.

Work out. My body has been falling apart for years now, but the inherent inactivity that comes with social isolation is resulting in further joint stiffness and increased pain. The only remedy is to move through the hurt and eventually the body will adjust, become more pliable and less resistant. I have everything I need for a good home workout the only thing missing is my willpower. There are no more excuses to make. Bonus: Go one day this week without a sugary snack. It’s a start.

Practice more self-care. It’s becoming harder to remember to do the basics when you have nowhere to go and no one to impress, but the purpose of self-care is not to impress others but to provide a sense of calm, comfort, and care for yourself. Self-care can help you self-sooth. Self-care can distract the mind. Self-care can help you begin the day with focus or end it with peace. Self-care lifts the spirits and energizes the body, and in these times it’s more important than ever.

This week I will not give in to the draw of inactivity. So much of what our bodies crave is not only bad for us but counter to what it is we really need. My anxiety and the creeping depression and loneliness are making it hard to stay motivated and focused. All I want to do is binge eat and binge watch. All I want to do is nothing but I know that isn’t really what I want and it’s far from what will make me feel better. This week I will not let time slip away. I will not reach for what is mindless or numbing. I will not let the walls close in.

Photo by thomas van der vennet on Unsplash

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Today is a better day. It’s my birthday eve and I feel both very excited and very nervous. I’m excited for my own perfect day, or as perfect as my wife and I could make it. I’m excited to receive some gifts and to eat some delicious food but I’m nervous to start a new year of my life and I’m also a little sad to end this one.

It’s a day full of anticipation. I’m living entirely for tomorrow right now, but I’m doing my best to come back and to make this day its own. I made a little time to write and mustered the motivation too. I didn’t finish anything of significance, but I did work on a few pieces sitting in my drafts. I had hoped to post so much more than I have, but I am not counting this as a failure but as a reminder.

I have never been very good at blogging challenges and I don’t particularly like them much either. They are a wonderful motivator though and even if I don’t post anything else more than my little journal entries for the rest of the month, I will feel like I have won. I’ve already written more in these 11 days than I have in over a year.

I will still keep at it, for the rest of the month at least, but I’m not sure daily blogging will every be something I am capable of. Maybe if I change the things I am posting. I’m considering ending my Weekend Coffee Shares. I write these little updates every day and I really would like to spend my weekends writing other things instead.

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The weather is gorgeous again but the reports are foretelling high winds and a 30-degree drop in temperature between today and tomorrow and through Monday. I’m bummed about the return of winter but I’m trying not to be. It’s not like I had big plans for the weekend, anyway. There is nowhere to go even if I could.

It’s another blah kind of day but the want to do more is there even if the energy and willpower isn’t. It really is like fighting yourself. Part of you is saying no to everything and whining all kinds of reason why and another part of you is calling that part a big baby and screaming that she has to suck it up and get to work if she really wants to change anything about her current situation. And then there is a third “I” the one who watches and wishes she had a say. She wishes she had more control and more understanding of these other two. She wishes she had her own life and didn’t have to rely on the others to do or not do.

That’s how it feels, but that isn’t really how it is. There is just me, just one, and I am simply made up of all kinds of contradictions and obsticals to overcome. I am just a person that is harder to be than others. Or maybe that isn’t actually how it is either.

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Today started out so badly but has improved so much since that I feel as if I’ve lived through two entirely different days at once.

I had more nightmares last night but with the help of a good dose of melatonin I was able to stay asleep and so only had to suffer through just the one. I’ve been waking up early again, which I took as a good sign, but today I hardly recognized myself in the mirror when I woke. My whole face felt swollen and on top of that my joints from the hips down were stiff and painful.

Shortly after waking a big mistake committed (unknowingly and accidentally) by me was discovered this morning and though it’s far too upsetting a to describe here, I will tell you that I was very angry with myself and sorry to my wife for messing up so royally. Of course she forgave it all and then set out to make everything right again. She even managed to cheer me somewhat, but it still sucks to be only the second best wife in this marriage.

I didn’t feel much like writing or reading as a result. The last place I wanted to be was in my own head, so I spent most of the day listening to music and cleaning around the house instead. It felt good to unplug for a while, move my body, and get some things done. I showered too and did some important self-care things. I managed eventually to eat something and now I think a hard cider and an evening on the couch could push the last of my humiliation away.

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Venturing out of the house when the need arises is becoming more and more stressful as this pandemic wears on. We were running out of some basics and wanted to get provisions for my quarantine birthday celebration in a few days. It took two hours and trips to three different grocery stores, and we still didn’t get everything we were looking for. It’s pretty awful out there.

The good news is the shelves are looking more and more stocked and it’s getting easier and easier to find what we need. Today was only difficult because most of what we were looking for were items that are not basic or essential. I think much of the bulk and panic buying is subsiding, but there is still no toilet paper anywhere. Thank goodness we still have quite a few rolls left.

Wearing a mask is difficult for me. I feel like I can’t breathe in it and my glasses get fogged up. With all the people around, the inability to find anything, and the effort it takes to maintain a 6 foot distance between yourself and others makes for a high anxiety and an irritable mood and, if you can’t get out fast enough, an inevitable panic attack. Under the circumstances, my wife and I did well, I think, but it’s hard to tell whether it’s better for both of us to go or only one.

I’m back home now, but it is a bad writing day so I’m taking it easy instead. I’ve been fighting a headache since yesterday afternoon and I wasn’t able to get a good night’s sleep either. I kept having bad dreams. I would wake up drenched in sweat from one only to fall back asleep and have another. Each one was a different terror all its own. Each dream was so vivid, so real, that I woke up confused and relieved that what I had been fighting through was not in fact my real life.

I hope this is not a new trend. I have a feeling it’s connected to my increased anxiety, which is obviously connected to everything going on and all the growing fear and uncertainty around me. I’m considering seeking therapy but I keep coming back to the fact that I am one of the lucky ones and instead of feeling anxious or afraid I should be feeling grateful. I shouldn’t need therapy to get through this when so many more people are getting through it with fewer recourses and less support than I already have.

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A friend called me today, and it meant the world. The hardest part about being away from people is how hard it is to feel cared about, loved, or wanted, but she made the effort to call, not just text, but call. The conversation was short, but it cheered me up and I have a feeling the good it did will last a long while. I think I’ll try calling people this week too. It isn’t the conversation so much as the thought that counts and I would like to spread the joy.

It’s been a while since I’ve written any poetry but today the words were coming easier so I thought I would give it a try. I’m pretty proud of the outcome and encouraged by the enthusiasm I was able to muster. Some days are going to be easier than others it seems, and maybe that’s okay as long as I make sure it’s a bad writing day by actually trying first by actually trying and I still do something productive with the day like reading or working on an older piece.

I finished book 11 of my Penguin Little Black Classics, A Cup Of Sake Beneath The Cherry Trees by Yoshida Kenkō, and started book 12, How to Use Your Enemies by Baltasar Gracián, which, it turns out, is also a book about how to use your friends. The premise may be shrewd, but I’m finding a lot of insight about the human psyche in here and I’ve realized that the way things should be and the way things are each a kind of truth.

098 /// Nothing Else to Do

Today is the last day of temperatures over 70 degrees for a while, so they say. I had hoped we could plan a hiking trip next week, but I see a severe dip in temperature and snow in the extended forecast. The trails will probably be muddy for a while. Oh well, there is plenty of time and the days are only going to go on growing warmer now.

The words weren’t flowing so well today so I gave myself permission to skip the writing so long as I promise to give it my best again come morning. I’m reading instead and have already finished On the Beach at Night Alone by Walt Whitman and am now sitting half-way through A Cup Of Sake Beneath The Cherry Trees by Yoshida Kenkō. With nothing else to do today, I think I’ll go ahead and finish it, then start on Borne by Jeff VanderMeer.

Some days all this time is welcome, some days it’s more than I can bear. Looking forward is anxiety inducing and imagining the sheer number of days to come that are filled with nothing paralyzes me. I have to take them one at a time. Time has to become irrelevant for now. There is just right now and what I have and the little I can do with it. It has to be okay. It has to be enough.

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The warm and sunny Spring weather continues. The morning birds chirping have returned and branches everywhere are budding and with it all brings small moments when I can forget, when I can pretend it is only Sunday rather than whatever day it is and that I am choosing to stay in to relax to forget about work rather than being forced.

Our plan was to grocery shop today, but there are warnings circulating about the coming weeks being the most important for social distancing. We are considering putting it off as long as possible. Near the end of the week we’ll head out to buy provisions for an at home birthday celebration. I’ve settled on steamed crab legs, artichokes, and cheesy risotto, cheesecake and a bottle of pinot grigio, if at all possible.

I’m back at the WordPress Discover prompts. I could not complete yesterday’s post but it is saved in my Google docs and I will keep chipping away at it until I get it done. I’m going to treat every day like that. I’ll do my best and write as much as I can. If I can finish something I will post it, whether I think it’s good or not. If I cannot finish it, I will keep at it until I do. My goal is all posts will still have been published by April 30th. I’m working out what a project in May might look like.

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As stressful and distressing as it to stay indoors, it is so much harder to leave the house and go anywhere. Wearing a mask is especially upsetting and my wife and i have decided that when we travel together one of us will stay in the car and we’ll alternate. This way we minimize exposure and neither of us has to feel so oppressed or suffocated inside the masks the whole time.

The juxtaposition of the inner distress against the gorgeous weather and the signs of spring all around is jarring. Normally I am rejoicing this time of you, my joy building by the day to peak midsummer, but I’m reluctant to allow these good feelings to take hols inside of me. I cannot begin to awaken to the season. There is so little to love, so little to feel good about now.

It’s hard to know whether whatever you feel is reasonable or if you have sunk to such depths of despair that everything is seen through a depressing light and exaggerated. You begin to wonder in this seclusion, “Is this who I am without anyone else?”. I’m beginning to take the lack of phone calls and text personally and marking my reluctance to send any in turn as a personal failure of character and heart.

And things keep getting worse too. Now the summer events are being cancelled too. Visits I was so looking forward too are off the table. How can I plan anything when I don’t even know if I will be paid? At least no one is disagreeing with me and there is no accompanying weight of guit to carry. This is no ones fault and we all have to make the hard choice.