Tag: Journal

It’s infusion day again. I had hoped today would go faster than last week but it’s been an hour and I’m still here hooked up to the I.V. and the bag isn’t even half empty yet. It’s still going to be a shorter stay than it used to be when I was on my old medication so i’m not complaining too much. The only thing that is worse now is that I don’t get to be in the big open comfy room with the big open windows and the gorgeous mountain views.

Instead I’m stuck in a room that I’m convinced used to be a janitor’s closet with no windows at all and no space for my wife to come in and sit with me. I’m told it’s due to the high demand for appointments at this center and because my infusion time is shorter than most others, I’m the one who gets the depressing “private infusion room”.

Oh well, at least the nurses are amazing and I will be out of here soon. I’m still working out what to expect after my infusions so I have the rest of the day off in case I need a nap. If I don’t, I’ll spend it cleaning and catching up on Star Wars: The Clone Wars. It’s going to be good day either way because I get to be inside away from the cold and I don’t have to come back here for another month.

It’s one of the better Monday’s I’ve had in a while. There isn’t much going on for once. Some days there are big projects to do, other days you are just maintaining the process. Today is a maintenance day. The process, the boring but exceedingly important process is what I am focusing on today. Data entry, filing, cross checking, following up, verifying, updating, these are the key tasks for the day.

I love this kid of work. Teaching is great, being on the buses is great too, but sitting behind a desk with my headphones in just flipping through paperwork and organizing information in accessible and understandable formats will always be my where my passion truly lies.

This feels so good, so calming and easy, that I think I will make every Monday “process days” from now on.

I wish this was another three-day weekend away from work and life’s obligations and though it isn’t, I’m trying to be grateful to have any three-day weekends at all rather than being disappointed that this one isn’t. I’m trying to focus on what needs to be done rather than wallowing in what I’d rather not do.

This week my wife and I swapped our usual house cleaning duties. She took over the laundry, because she gets it done faster and more efficiently than me, and I took over cleaning the bathroom because she hates doing it. She kept the grocery shopping, and I kept the dishes and we are still alternating meal prep duties. I’m grateful for a relationship where gender roles are non-existent and no expectations are set in stone.

Everything is negotiable. Everything is changeable.

I was supposed to be in Colorado Springs for a family event but the schedule changed, then changed back too late for my wife and I to make the drive down there. We’d spent the morning getting ready and not wanting to waste the time (and being in need of cheering up) we decided to get out, enjoy the nice weather, and buy ourselves something nice in the process.

We started out on my favorite lawn and garden place to buy new pots and my dream plant, a small monstera deliciosa more commonly known as a split-leaf philodendron.

The warm temperatures and the rows and rows of greenery made it easy to pretend it was Spring. I only wish the weather was going to last. Looking at the extended forecast it seems winter will return at least until next weekend. Maybe I will return and pretend again for a while then.

I got a new book, Borne by Jeff VanderMeer, an impulse buy based totally on the fact that I enjoyed another one of his books, Annihilation. I was tempted to get 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami but that book always scares me. I’m afraid I my expectation of it are too high and that I will ultimately hate it. Next time, next time…

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Came home with burgers, fries, and milkshakes for dinner, dimmed the lights and put on The Lighthouse. When the movie ended my first thought was “what the fuck was that”? I didn’t like it but the more I think about it, the more I see the genius of it. It about the lies we tell and the lies we tell ourselves. It about jealousy, socialization (male socialization in particular), desire (male desire in particular), isolation, jealousy, and anger, just to name a few things.

It was entertaining and creepy, but a little too weird to make it onto my list of favorites. Glad I saw it, but I didn’t pay to see it in a movie theater.

The emotional toll I took yesterday is lingering and I find it hard to shake my sympathies for my coworkers pain and my worried that her pain might become my pain some day.

I’m finding it hard to smile or to laugh and my friends, all going through their own small frustrations and sufferings, are unable to pull me out of this whole and I, in turn, am unable to help them too. And that’s okay. They don’t owe me emotional support on demand and I don’t owe them the same. We have to suffer silently sometimes. We all have to learn to self-sooth.

Today I’m choosing to put my headphones in and let music carry me to other moods. I’ve got my calendar out and I’m filling it up with some writing ideas. It’s looking pretty bare but perhaps one or two pieces a month is all I can, or should, ask from myself.

I’m looking forward to going home and being with my wife. She need not cheer me up and I don’t expect her to say the right things or the one thing that will get me out of it. She doesn’t need to do anything to comfort or cheer me. She just has to exist in the same general space as me and suddenly the world, and I, and right again.

Today was hard, emotionally. I’m working with a new employee who’s spouse suddenly died less than two weeks ago. She had only been here for 3 days before he passed and then stopped returning to work saying only that she was (quite understandably) having trouble coping with the loss.

I thought she would not be able to return at all but she called and asked if it was possible to continue her training and since my last class has already been released I had the time and agreed. When she walked in this morning I hardly recognized her as the same person I met two weeks ago. She has lost weight and her eyes—my god her eyes—they looked as though she were lost or still in shock. She’s seems present, but appears to have lost the ability to connect meaningfully with her surroundings.

I feel so bad for her, and at the same time, I’m terrified of her. I’m terrified that her reality could some day be mine and those eyes would be my eyes. All day I longed to be near my wife and I promised myself to spend a little more time holding her, looking at her, kissing her, and making sure she knows I love her in case one day it’s her struggling to cope with the loss of me.

I haven’t seen my favorite coworkers in over 4 days and you can tell we’ve missed each other. We’ve been laughing all day like it’s the last day before summer break and there’s no more work to do or work worth doing. I haven’t laughed this much in a long time and I feel lucky and incredibly grateful to have a job where I get to have fun and smile every day. I’m lucky to have bosses and coworkers who are also my friends.

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Tonight is democratic debate night and just 30 minutes in I am both thoroughly entertained and 100% sure of my primary candidate choice. Still, I do wish the whole process was a lot closer to being done than it is now. I’m burned out on politics and I’ve never been burned out on politics.

I’m also afraid. I don’t know how I could process a repeat of 2016. I know I would live but my last shred of connection to my country would be severed. I would no longer feel that I lived in a just society and to continue to live here and to pay taxes might begin to feel immoral. It would be too much for my soul to bear.

Being out in the world is regressing me. I felt much better, much more myself and much more energetic yesterday but being forced out of bed and out of the house before I felt rested or ready is exhausting me and bringing my symptoms back and of course I left all my hard medications at home thinking I was over the worst of it and past the possibility of relapse.

Today is a “non-pupal contact” day at work which means most of my coworkers are still at home fast asleep. I also had the option of staying home, but I figured since the day would be an easy and quiet one I might as well try to make up some of those hours I’ve been missing lately. What I failed to remember was that these quiet easy days tend to be the hardest to get through. Time is dragging, and the boredom is exhausting.

I’m trying to make the most of this time though. I’m catching up on clerical duties and making time for my personal to-do list items in between tasks. I filled out the editorial calendar I printed last week, posted a new cutout poem on Instagram, and made it through the Heartsaver Instructor Essentials Online course too. It’s a long day, but it’s also one of the most productive I’ve had in a long time.

I’m off of work for the holiday which is about as much as the 3rd Monday in February ever means to me. The holiday was first meant to be a celebration of George Washington’s birth a man who not only owned slaves but fought for the formation of a country founded on stolen land.

Lincoln’s birthday was added to the celebration and though he’s a much more respectable man and more worthy of remembrance for me than Washington, but he is only one of many Presidents who have let women, people of color, and the LGBTQ community down.

So, I’m spending the day pretending it’s Sunday instead and getting ready for the workweek at a much more relaxed pace than I’m usual. I made sure to start my preparation early in the weekend knowing that I’d spend much of my actual Sunday out of the house. Tomorrow will be a sort of half work day. It’s an “non-pupal contact” day which means the district will be open but there are no students to transport. Most of my coworkers will be out so it’ll be nice and quiet.

Just knowing I get to ease into the week and that it will be a short week too makes the end to the weekend a calm and peaceful one. I wish every “Sunday” could be like this.

Today is the first Sunday of our new effort to attend family day every week, but to alternate the families we spend time with. Today we are with my wife’s family and next week we will be back at my brother’s house with mine. It’s been a while since we’ve come over here. My family pushes harder for these kinds of visits while we are the ones who have to do the pushing with hers. They love seeing us but it’s too easy to get into the bad habit of letting life get in the way.

But we don’t want to let life get in the way. We want to make sure to make the effort and to let people know we more than care, but that we also enjoy their company.

The visit has been lovely and lively too! It’s been a while since I’m been able to debate politics in such a riveting way and though we’re all liberals here we do have different ideas about how to move forward, bring this country together, and achieve our goals with a sense of compassion and inclusion. What I learned is that I might not be quite as liberal or radical as I thought and that I do in fact believe that the middle road is a respectable place to govern from.