Life was so stressful after the attempted overthrow of our Democracy, I was so worried all the time, then things moved ahead mostly as they should and I was weird and jittery for a bit. But I am still here. I couldn’t write, I wasn’t feeling it, I read instead but also did a lot of other things.
I am upping my Game Master game, trying to get better at running combats, better at Roll20.
I’ve been gaming a lot. I average about 3 or 4 RPGs per week including the one I am currently running.
I learned how to crochet a Magic Circle so now I can crochet amigurumi better, and mittens, etc.
Mastered the “half double crochet” stitch. You’d think that would be a single stitch but no… anyway, I finally got that one!
I have been making amigurumi stars, bees, etc
I am attempting my first sweater, I think it’s my first sweater, I forget a lot of stuff these days. LOL
I’ve been doing my usual stuff too and working.
So yeah, still trying to level up and become a more competent human!
So, to catch me up to today: democracy still hangs in the balance, we topped 100,000 infections yesterday, wow, and my hometown voted over 90% for the side of sanity, human rights, and compassion. A mixed bag. I don’t know how many died of Covid19 yesterday but it’s usually around 1,000. One thousand, it’s just a number, so abstract to hear it like that: 1,000 died yesterday. That is 1,000 people, 1,000 human lives cut short in a horrific way. 1,000 people dying pretty much alone, isolated, every single day from just this one disease. I say all that to remind myself of the 10s of thousands of broken hearts happening because of those deaths. I need to be patient, be safe, keep everyone safe by continuing to wear a mask, keeping a nice 6 ft distance from others, staying the course.
Still no word on whether democracy will be renewed for any further seasons. I’m trying not to think about it. I’m trying not to think about the awful people out there threatening the poll workers with guns to try to get them to stop counting votes because they don’t care about democracy or freedom only the continuation of their orange faced baboon in chief’s reign of idiocy and destruction. So, good job me, there I go thinking about it!
Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out. Think about art, think about gardening, think about books and reading. It’s all good. It’s all good. Everything will be ok, sanity will prevail, it will. When it does there will be a fuckton of work to do to get things back to anything approaching normal or good, again. And there will be even more work to do to bring about universal healthcare, racial justice, and human rights for all. Things are bad, and the flames have been fanned by a madman for nearly 4 years now, so it’s going to suck, and be a huge amount of work to fix it, but we can fix it. Ok, here’s me not thinking about it again.
Laying low today with a horrid knot in my back, watching Liziqi and trying not to know anything about politics today. Final word will not be for a few days yet as all votes are counted so… I just can’t take the ups and downs right now, my stress is pretty well maxed out.
So I lie on this heating pad and I watch Liziqi and the world falls away. Here is a short video of hers to brighten your day, just in case you need it as bad as I do. https://youtu.be/d1MLIw6mP2k This woman inspires me and her videos calm me when my nerves are jangling.
Life continues, I am now working on getting ready for Thanksgiving. There is so much to do and I’ve already tried to get a turkey once and found none in stock. I guess I’ll just try each week until I get one. I’m hoping I’ll be able to get everything we need, so many traditional dishes to make.
My boss will be working from home after a possible exposure to Covid19 so that will be a bit of a strain on the library. She really keeps things on track and level around there and I know being short staffed is going to mean we can’t do as much as we usually do. Hopefully she is fine and will test negative. She’s an awesome boss and a truly good person.
Ok, that’s it, that’s all I’ve got today. Be well all of you.
No matter how I try I just can’t seem to drum up much enthusiasm for Halloween this year. I don’t have the mental energy to come up with the wonderful ideas to salvage this one. Or so it seems today, with only 3 days left to pull a rabbit out of my hat. Normally I would be busily working on costumes, making zombie sugar cookies, decorating with our Halloween stuff, and ordering some scary movies from the library or planning a one-shot horror run for the family. I’m tired. I’m drained right now. I know my sweet husband feels the same.
We started this year with the horrifying wildfires in Australia and California. Gods, those seemed like the worst thing, didn’t they? I have loved ones in Australia and CA and I was so worried about them and about all the animals and other people caught in such shockingly bad situations. Obviously the year had to get better from there but it so Did Not. The fires in Australia were brought under control eventually, and even CA had something of a respite but the world situation just got worse. CA is on fire again, has been for what feels like ages and that is almost the least of my worries, not really, it’s still a big worry. Most of my worry time is used for the newest rise in Covid-19 cases and the political unrest in the US. Watching a sitting president fan the flames of hate and violence is not something I ever thought I’d see. My son came of age watching it, and hearing how the climate is collapsing, and now a global pandemic… and people wonder at the nihilistic sense of humor Gen-Z has. My son literally turned 18 in quarantine. So did a lot of kids.
This year horror is all too real and it’s everywhere. I feel like I can’t turn on my computer without finding out yet another unarmed POC has been blatantly murdered by police. The protests over police violence continue but get less and less coverage even as the police use tear gas on peaceful, unarmed pregnant women, small children, and everyone else who dares ask that POC be treated as human beings. I can’t open my computer without seeing yet another highest cases per day report as thousands die and other thousands flock to the President’s super spreader events and refuse to wear masks and scream their approval of the continued denial of science. And there is so much more. So much hate and violence, so much despotism and inhumanity. Even my dreams are filled with stress.
So, I don’t even know why I want to salvage Halloween. Horror is the new normal. 2020 is such a shitshow. And yet, whatever distractions we can manage should be managed. My son, a freshly minted adult, needs me to find the good, to focus on the brightest hopes I can, to provide whatever structure I can in this, the upside-down I never thought we’d live in. Things are crazy enough for him without mom abandoning the rhythms of the seasons and all the celebrations that mark the passage of time. So I keep fighting to stay as positive as I can. I cook our meals, plan and run RPGs, provide the little luxuries of favorite foods when I can, and talk about the future as if everything will be alright because he, and my girls, need to believe the future is worth showing up for.
So I guess I have a Halloween feast to plan, some zombie cookies to bake, and I’ll need some pumpkins to carve into Jack O’Lanterns too. The bridge to the future will lit by candles and guarded by leering pumpkins.
What is up with creepy dudes? I just had to block someone on Twitter for the first time and I hate it. I’ve blocked dozens on Facebook, of course, something about the format there invites creeps to post and message I guess, but this is the first time I’ve done it over on Twitter. The dude in question is also the first stranger to message me. This was nothing overt, nothing threatening, I didn’t even let him get to the point of being actually inappropriate because this is not my first rodeo.
He started with: “Hey, how are you doing today?” He had just followed me and his profile looked normal, his politics seemed sane, people I follow also followed him, so I followed him back. Then I get: “There are no words to express the gratitude that I feel in my heart for having followed me and how your beauty makes my day so special.” And like the generally kind person I am I assume the best intentions of friendliness and respond w/ a neutral ‘That’s kind of you to say. Thanks! Have a great day.” That’s just manners. It is not flirting. Flirting would be more like, ‘wow, thank you, you’ve made my day! You’ve got a great smile… ‘ or something. I feel like I have been polite and kind while signalling that this is just friendly. He comes back asking where I’m from. I wasn’t on Twitter at the time so he offers that he’s from wherever etc. Days go by, I’m not usually on Twitter very much, and he says, hello, how are you today? I respond with, fine, thanks, I hope you are staying safe. Yep he is. Asks about the weather, where I’m from again. I respond non-specifically, give him a region. (like, 1,000 miles from where he says he is.) He asks if I’m married, if I have kids, tells me he’s divorced etc. Tells me something tragic, I say that’s rough, like a person does.
Now, I’ve been increasingly feeling like his questions are not quite right, they feel a little invasive and I’m hoping he’s about to chill but the needle goes into the creep zone with his next and last query: “Hope I can be your very good friend?” Dude, WTF. That is not ok. Starting out with a compliment I can understand, (my pic is now a few years old and it’s cute) testing the waters with a compliment is ok. But after a woman tells you she is married you need to chill. You can say ‘lucky guy’ which he did, and move on either to being an online acquaintance or move on and look for a single chick. Right? He could have said he hoped we could be friends and it would have been better but he asked, immediately, for a big jump in intimacy, to be my “very good friend.” This would honestly be creepy if it came from another woman. It feels like a tactic, it feels like grooming, it feels like being tested for weaknesses.
At this stage in the game, having been through the mill a few times now, having dealt with my share and then some of abuse, I see it for what it is. I am done doubting my instincts. I am done allowing myself to be manipulated. Yeah, I hate having to put up barriers, I’d rather be friendly and be friends with loads of people but I am not going to put up with overt or subtle creeps. I am not full of myself, I don’t think I am ‘all that’ but I’m cute and I look pretty good for my age. I’m at a point where I don’t feel beautiful anymore, time is having it’s say, but I am still a target for creeps.
I was playing my Harry Potter game on my phone last Summer (2019) in the park and two guys went and stood at the head of the path. They had their heads together and every time I glanced at them they were looking at me. I kept them firmly in my peripheral vision because my inner alarm was silently pulsing. They walked down the path, I was off to one side giving myself plenty of room, they were looking at me as they went past, I nodded politely. They hit the end of the path and began walking along the road back toward where they’d started. They stopped halfway, where there are a lot of tall bushes. Again, I could see them talking, eyeing me and my alarms were no longer saying ‘Be Alert.’ My instincts were beginning to howl at me to get the hell out of there. I walked quickly to the head of the path and went home, some 200 yards to my house. Of course I second guessed myself. I ran it by my 17 year old son and he said; “No, no, that is legit, they were clearly doing something creepy.” (He then said he would go to the park with me whenever I wanted to play Harry Potter on my phone because he is awesome.)
It’s ok to give a woman a casual compliment: “You look great today.” or, “You have a really nice smile.” Something we can just say, “Thanks.” to. It’s ok to look at a woman and think she is pretty but don’t stare. If you look too long, and accidentally creep a woman out say, “Oops, sorry! I was just noticing how pretty you are, didn’t mean to stare.” and then turn your attention elsewhere. It’s not difficult to not be creepy, loads of people, some of them men, do it every day. Think of it this way: Do you love your mom? Or your auntie? Let’s say Mom (of Auntie) is single for whatever reason. She’s out an about, walking in a park, in coffee shop, waiting for a bus, or something. There’s a guy there, he thinks she’s pretty, wants to get to know her, wants to ask her on a date. What do you want him to say to her? How do you want him to act toward this woman who is precious to you? How should he approach her so that you wouldn’t think he was being a creep? Think about that for a bit and next time you want to give a woman a compliment let it be your guide.
Good Morning. Since the house is still buried in boxes to some extent I am not focused on decluttering. Instead I have decided to focus on activities and areas of my life where I am currently feeling more accomplished and competent: stress free holiday planning, crafting, and reading.
I pretty much straight up brag about how I pull off the holidays and bragging is not really my thing at all. Like pretty much everyone I used to stress out over all things holiday and pretty much had a pretty stress-filled miserable time. I worked my butt off decorating, shopping, wrapping, and pulling off ‘the big meal.’ I would spend Thanksgiving day cooking and cleaning up and be utterly crushed when the meal took about 30 minutes and then everyone went back to video games or football or whatever. Christmas was similar but more so. I would get so stressed that I was miserable and I was also no fun to be around. Part of that was perfectionism, that insane mindset that makes you feel like one little thing going wrong negates Everything Else that went right, another part of it was that I was disorganized and going about things the wrong way.
It took a while, it didn’t happen overnight, but over the years I have completely transformed my experience of the big Fall/Winter holidays. Thanksgiving and Christmas are now virtually stress-free for me and I have way more time to relax and enjoy them. The crazy thing is that what I do to have these stress-free holidays isn’t complicated at all. Normally, I would shop for Xmas presents over the course of a whole year, squirreling away gifts one by one as I found perfect gifts at very low prices and carefully noting down each gift and who it was for in a notebook. 2020 being the non-stop dumpster fire that it has been so far, I haven’t been out at the charity shops or stores running crazy sales, I just started shopping about 1 or 2 weeks ago… when I finally realized it was October and I was rapidly running out of time. So this year is different. I have started shopping at the same time I have started planning the feasts. (I started thinking about the feasts about when I usually do)
Stress-free celebrations are easy:
Plan Ahead
Stay Organized
Right about now is a good time to be finalizing the menu for Thanksgiving. This is the easiest part, just make a list of all the foods you want to serve for your feast. Here’s my list:
Gordon Ramsey’s Christmas Turkey & Gravy
Stuffing
Mashed potatoes
Broccoli casserole
Cranberry sauce
Rolls & butter
Butternut squash
Chocolate chip sour cream coffee cake
Apple pie
White wine
Sparkling cranberry juice
Hot cocoa
There is plenty to do there, and I do spend the morning cooking, but I am calm and happy anyway. The obvious thing is that I do everything ahead of time that I possibly can. I make the cranberry sauce a day or 2 before, I do all the baking a day or so before, I oven roast the squash ahead of time and use the stovetop for reheating and the final touches. I assemble the broccoli casserole the day before, and peel and chop the potatoes in between turkey prep steps. At this stage, I would also note on my list the cooking temps and baking time for each item that needs to go in the oven that day. Then I pick a sort of average temp, since I have just the one oven, and adjust all the cook times down the list. Then I make a note of what time each thing will need to go into the oven on the day of the feast in order to have everything ready all at once. If I had too many things needing to go into the oven at the same time I would have to rethink things a little and do a bit of oven tetris. With what I have planned above my son and I will spend the morning using Gordon’s YouTube video to prep and cook the turkey and make the gravy. I will also make the mashed potatoes, rolls and stuffing and do the final steps for a few other things. I’ll have music on, I’ll be sipping white wine, and I’ll be relaxed and happy as I have been for the past several years.
Our Christmas feast is similar, really, some of the foods will be different, but the planning and making ahead are the same. I should have the xmas feast planned shortly after Thanksgiving. This is the planner I used to use: https://christmas.organizedhome.com/printable/christmas-planner/holiday-menu-planner I just ignored the fiddly little categories and put all my ‘sides’ wherever. My form is a lot simpler.
Is it that time again? Yep! It’s actually a hella late start for me I try to start my holiday prep in January so I can pick away at it all year. That is a habit born of being broke for several or more years of my adult life. I would shop all the crazy after Xmas sales at Michael’s and Jo Ann’s and snag craft items I could whip up for the next xmas, or decorations I could give as gifts or add to our collection. (75-90% off was my jam) I also spent the whole year visiting tag sales and secondhand shops looking to luck out on clothes, books, toys, etc, that were in excellent condition and perfect for the people I was shopping for. Our Christmases were always pretty amazing despite the bad financial times. Anyway….
This year, due mostly to the pandemic, I am starting now in mid-October. Eek! We need to save money this year for sure. Everything is unstable at this point; jobs, the political climate, the actual climate, just everything, so we are trying not to spend too much, trying to build up a cushion in case we need it. In a shocking development, to me at least, I am pretty much forced to buy all our presents new. There has been no browsing the aisles at charity shops, no tag sales, nothing like that. I have to order everything online to be safe. So were doing a category thing:
One thing you Want
one thing you Need
one thing to Wear
one thing to Read
one thing to Eat
one thing to Drink
one thing to Play
one thing to Make
That seems like a lot until you realize that our ridiculous “normal” was 15-20 presents each thanks to my shopping strategies. So this is a significant cut back BUT I will be forced to get it all new so that kind of shifts the cost back up. I’m still looking for deals, of course, and I’m doing ok. The categories are mostly broad and a lot of the items will end up being cheap, like something to drink is going to be tea for a few of us and rootbeer for a couple, only my hubby will get expensive as he wants scotch. Something to eat is cheap too. I have requests for chocolate, pretzels, ‘fancy’ ramen, smartfood, and crackers so far. I expect my remaining daughter to request dill pickles. My son asked for underwear for something to wear, my husband needs jeans, one daughter asked for a jacket. I’d pay a lot less if I could shop second hand but hopefully the novelty of getting stuff brand new will make it worth it this year. Yikes.
Stockings will be stuffed with mostly practical items; hand lotion, toothbrushes, shampoo, etc, and food treats like cocoa packets, mints and so on. There may be socks, or gloves, probably a few homemade items. I love the stockings, I like to get creative and fancy with them, make them specific to the recipient and all, but this year will be a little different and that’s ok. We will be surrounded by all the decorations, and we will have our little feast. We will play games and watch movies, and read aloud, and it will be lovely.
Soon my son and I will begin planning said feast. He will peruse our Harry Potter cookbooks and surf Youtube cooking videos and come to me with suggestions. He wants me to make spotted dick for dessert this year, I suspect mostly because of the name, and I will. It has raisins in it and it sounds kind of awful but I’ll make another dessert as back up and it will all be fine.
Oh, I need to get holiday crackers, I need to put that on my list! I have a whole binder that keeps me on track for Yule/Christmas. It’s a thin binder, nothing overwhelming, I used to just use a few pages of a spiral notebook. For years and years I used a notebook and all I wrote in it was a list of gifts for each member of my little family and a list of their stocking stuffers. Since I shopped all year and hid things away I really needed those lists of I might forget which gift went to which person. It also helped me keep things even as far as number of gifts and $ spent for each of them. As each present was wrapped and tagged I would cross it off. It was really helpful for knowing if something was missing and I needed to hunt it up but as systems go it was very, very basic. In 2017, after visiting Diagon Alley in FL, I got it in my head to make us a Harry Potter Christmas and nothing was going to get in my way.
I made us all House Stockings and scarves and I made a bunch of decorations. Google search was my best friend as I looked for ideas on how to create this first themed Christmas. I cooked up a storm too, making a Hogwarts/English Christmas feast complete with butter beer and other such treats. It was all this crazy activity that lead me to improve my system. Instead of just present lists I needed to keep track of many projects I was working on and create a schedule for myself for both the crafts and all the cooking. It’s kind of funny, I used to stress out horribly on the big holidays and now I am relaxed and enjoying them. I am on track to be finished with all but wrapping and meal prep by the end of October!
Though it often feels to me as if we lead boring lives in which very little happens the reality is a little different. Here is our year so far:
January: Happy New Year! First few days I see at least a dozen memes on FB about how right around every year “20” there is a terrible plague. heh, cute. Coincidentally, we start hearing that there’s something going on with a virus in China. Within a short time we’re still hearing everything is under control with the virus, but we’re seeing images of people in hazmat suits disinfecting the streets and the first city or province gets shut down. I begin stocking the house up a little more than usual; extra pasta, meat for the freezer, beans, rice, etc. (I always keep a good supply of food etc on hand in case of emergencies. I just increase our stores a little, fill in gaps.) Our tenant lets us know she is moving out and can’t pay February’s rent, we remind her she already paid when she moved in so, no worries. She tells us she is pregnant and moving in with her boyfriend.
February: I continue buying extra and stocking up, the news out of China isn’t good, the virus has spread to other countries, it is inevitable it will come here. I begin to get nervous about our son’s upcoming wisdom tooth extraction. It’s supposed to happen in March, he’s in pain, he needs it, but we’re starting to get a little nervous about going out in public, we’re wondering if we actually are going to have to isolate ourselves at home to stay safe. As the numbers everywhere start racking up, we wonder When do we pull the trigger?how do we decide it’s time to stay home? I get sick, it seems to be the flu, Tamiflu puts me right. We wonder how we will deal with the loss of rental income as we have no intention of looking for a new tenant as this virus continues to spread.
March: The boy has his wisdom teeth out, all goes well, yay. My husband gets ill, really ill, the doctor won’t see him. They prescribe over the phone, he takes breathing treatments 3 times a day, he takes pills. I worry. The doctors say they are assuming he is Covid-19 positive. My boss tells me not to come in. Our daughter works at a pharmacy and they aren’t taking precautions, she quits. Schools close. We are all home now. We don’t go out. We clean, we cook, we play video games and catch up on our reading. I worry about my husband, he’s exhausted. I begin working from home as best I can. My husband’s work won’t wait, they text and call, he begins working remotely through coughing fits. It’s unreal. He’s starting to feel better! His work hours keep expanding. We’re lucky, we both still have jobs, many don’t.
April: We mail our tax stuff in. We keep working. There’s hardly any traffic going by. I cook, a LOT, I start baking again. My husband is doing better, still coughing, but better. We start gaming more, lots of RPGs are started or picked back up where we’d left off. Isolation isn’t so bad. We meet online with friends to play Cards Against Humanity. We get groceries delivered! Huzzah! We’re using the empty apartment as a work space/art space/extra video game space. I turn the shed into an art studio/space to get away from the kids with my hubby.
May: Everything is still weird. We’re working from home, gaming online, getting groceries delivered, etc. This is the month we start to hear that people at only a small remove from us have gotten Covid-19, friends of friends… it’s scary. My husband’s aunt gets it, some of our friends get it. We stay home. We try not be paranoid about it, but we are not going to get this damn thing. The list of symptoms keeps growing, the ages and health condition of people getting this and suffering horribly from it keeps expanding.
June: We celebrate our son’s 18th birthday at home with cake and few presents we’ve gotten him online. It’s low key. We play an RPG, eat pizza and drink root beer. We finally begin to feel the sting of not seeing our friends and family in person. We keep working remotely. Our lives have something of a rhythm now, the kids are learning remotely. Our daughter gets her associate’s degree, our son passes all his 11th grade classes. My boss starts talking about the library reopening. Eventually I hear we will be back in the building in July. I am not happy about this, I don’t feel ready, I worry we will reopen to the public too fast.
July: I go back to work. It’s surreal working in an empty library. We do curbside pick up and delivery now. I devise and assemble take home crafts. Our budget is slashed way down but we all still have our jobs. I buy a few books for the collection. We struggle to keep up with cleaning all the books and other materials after their 3 day quarantine in the Community Room. Everything is confusing and different. Everyone is overwhelmed. We start feeling pressure from some people to loosen up our restrictions, to visit, to have lunch outside and “socially distanced.” My husband gets pressure from his job: What would make him feel safe so he can return to campus? Nothing, he tells them, honestly nothing. It’s an international boarding school and we’ve been hearing how many more enquiries they are getting from Texas, California, and Florida… You don’t say? How shocking that the uber-wealthy living in states where the virus is completely out of control want to send their kids to the relative safety of our neck of the woods! We promise we are 100% shocked by this. My uncle is diagnosed with cancer…
August: My husband continues to work from home, he digs in his heels, he is high risk. We get a note from his Dr. stating he is high risk for this virus and must be allowed to work remotely. The school continues to pressure him, suggests more isolated offices but when he starts to say that one in particular might actually work they say; ‘oh, you can’t have that one. A person that won’t even be teaching needs to use that room to write their book… ” because the huge free house they have all to themselves … doesn’t have room? As happens from time to time, my husband is contacted by a headhunter. Would he like to work in the field he just got a degree for? My husband starts seriously contemplating leaving this job. My uncle is rushed to the hospital and dies 2 days later on his daughter’s birthday. My husband is interviewed for a very cool job. He gets a second interview. We contemplate what life would be like if he actually liked/loved his job. We get the apartment ready so a friend can move in. We talk about having less money with the new job. We talk about how much notice he ought to give if he is offered this new job. I see a glimpse of a less stressed-out version of my husband.
September: Today, the first of the month, my husband’s assistant quits. He does not want to go onto campus either. He will work the next 2 weeks if he can do so remotely. Unfortunately, he was supposed to be the boots on the ground so that doesn’t help at all. How does one hire someone during a pandemic? How does one train someone remotely? We’re not sure. We are about to find out. We hope very much to receive an offer from the company my husband has been interviewed by because what is going to happen to the school is going to be an absolute shit-show. OMG. FUBAR. Our friend/new tenant is moving in today! The apartment is clean and shiny, the weather is good, I can’t wait. I know we can’t hang out like we want to but she’ll be here and we can sit outside and talk maybe? ^_^ Our son starts his senior year next week. My library may open at the end of the month and I have mixed feelings about that. I’m still worried about the virus numbers spiking a few weeks after school resumes.
Hurting today, my head, my joints, it’s not a great day if I’m talking about pain. We’re supposed to game tonight but I’m not sure I’m up to it. I wouldn’t even have to be out of bed to play so that’s saying something. I took a brief walk this morning. I’ve made breakfast and lunch for Bill and I, done a few dishes, and am trying to come up with a dinner plan but that is the extent of my efforts today.
Oh, wait, I’ve also been emailing back and forth with one of my teen’s mom about matching books that interest her son with audiobooks so he can listen while he reads. It’s really tricky because audio books are expensive so libraries tend to focus on physical books. I’m working on it though, even requested my Director purchase a copy of an audio book to match one of the YA paperbacks the teen is interested in. We’ll see if she feels it’s a good investment. The book is not a new title, not terribly old either, but we’d have the only Ebook in the system so it would likely see some use.
What stage of the apocalypse is it when we’re all stuck in a weird limbo of the world returning almost to normal even as the virus spreads. My grown offspring can’t job hunt, can’t see friends, aren’t sure what their best moves are and neither are we? Even weirder, what stage is it when I love my job but I kind of want to quit it so I won’t be exposed, but we’re taking all the precautions we can at work and I really love the job, and my boss is Awesome, but I cannot, cannot bring this virus home? And what insanity is it that my mother can beg to spend time with me, insisting she has been “Super Careful” and socially distant etc etc… but I looked at her FB and there are pictures from her recent travels of her on the beach with a whole group of people None of whom are masked?????
Later, some time in the dim and distant future I may understand WTH she is thinking, but I doubt it. Almost everyone that I know personally who is acting foolishly about this pandemic is a Boomer. I know some Boomers are actually being careful but in all seriousness, I totally get why Gen-Z is calling this virus the “Boomer-Doomer.” In my household, that has been locked down as hard as it can be since early March, Gen-X, Millennials, and Gen-Z are determined to ride out the insanity and live to see a post Covid-19 world. Our Boomer relatives are travelling, spending time with friends, giving people rides, shopping, etc. I do not get it. They are at higher risk…
I just looked over at one of my very latest purchases, online purchases, I haven’t been inside a store since early March, and I was struck by the feeling of peace it gave me just to look on it. It’s a cellophane package containing, I think, 240 little skeins of embroidery floss in what I am calling “Every Color” with capital letters. I think there are 2 of each color so, really, there are many more colors in the world than in this little package, but it is honestly beautiful and I feel like I could make any design my heart could desire with this lovely collection of thread. It only cost about $15 which makes me happy because I love good prices. I’d be happier if I’d found it used, like if I’d stumbled on it at a tag sale or in a charity shop, I prefer second hand things. Second hand purchases save things from the landfill and can be had for pennies on the dollar of their original price. Awesome all the way around.
Anyway, The feeling I get looking at this colorful bundle was striking because I’ve been feeling so stressed lately what with the global pandemic and the failure of our leadership to contain or manage it and so forth. That peaceful feeling made me pause to think about it and I realised what I feel when I look at my packet of embroidery thread is wealth. I feel a great feeling of “enough,” of satiety, I feel content and confident that whatever I need to do with this thread I have got it covered. To me that is wealth. It’s the same feeling I have when my cupboards and fridge are full and their contents are varied. It’s that same feeling I have when my TBR (to be read) pile is vast, deep, and partially unknown, & when I know there are several books lurking there that I am positively hungry for. And it is the same feeling I have when I have several unpainted canvases, tons of paint, a bag of colorful yarn, or a drawer full of clean undies and socks. Oh! And empty notebooks and pens!
I feel so wildly, undeservedly lucky when I can look and see that any of these things are true, but I have realized that the truest wealth is time, is self-determination, getting to actually choose how you spend your time. I mean, we all probably know this, that time is the most precious resource. We have what we have and we cannot make any more of it. We can’t save time we can only spend it. I think the lockdown, and having to go back to work, made me see it clearly, undeniably, and deeply for the first time. For a few months, I got to decide when I worked, when I rested, when I ate, etc. It was disturbing and difficult at first, I made myself get up and go to bed on my normal schedule. I scheduled work activities each day, 2-3 hours per day to get the same number of hours in as usual but never having to work 7 in a row as I had at my job. That felt nice at first but wore on me terribly over time. Instead I worked about 4 hours 3 times a week and found that better, better still when I clumped those days together, though I was still able to be flexible to accommodate webinars and such. I finally found a wonderful rhythm, a way to order my life so I felt less stressed, had time to relax and pursue art, crafts, reading, journaling and other writing. I felt better than I had in a long time.
Now that I am back at work coving my usual schedule, quite honestly, I hate it. I work Monday and Friday evenings and all day every-other Saturday. It isn’t the number of hours that’s the problem, not at all, it’s 8 hours one week 15 the next repeat indefinitely, no problem. It’s being locked into the days and times. It eats me up, it destroys my ability to relax on any day I have to work and makes me feel rushed, pressured, and stressed. I’m back to 2-3 days per week where I am not home to make dinner and 2 days where I don’t get to eat dinner with my family. And the evening hours are not great for me to be working during. I am not at my best then, I am mostly spent by about 5:30 PM, just biorhythm-wise. My body wants me to recline and relax in the evening, or stroll, maybe. My body communicated this quite clearly to me when I was the master of how my hours were spent. I can get a LOT done in a day if I know that once dinner is done I am “off the clock.” Without work taking me away from my home I was able to use my clothesline much more frequently, I got into a habit of foraging berries and making breakfast smoothies, I started walking again for exercise.
It doesn’t help that no one else in my house is leaving it for work yet. My husband is locked into just brutal hours of work, stressed to the max and completely burned out with his job. I am not saying I envy that, I feel horrible for him, what is expected of him by his job (I.T. Professional) at this point is ridiculous and cruel. He is expected to do it almost completely during work hours but of course he can’t confine all that he has to do to those hours, there is just way, way too much. I need to be more grateful that I have as much lingering self-determination as I do, I am going to work on that. BUT, I think it is insane that most people live by the clock, serve corporate or other masters, and are expected to give SO MUCH for SO LITTLE in return. And, shockingly, people are expected to be grateful for even the worst, crappiest, most slavish, dehumanizing jobs. That isn’t me, but it is a LOT of people. Chained to clocks, having to work through illness, injury, at jobs that actually cause them considerable hardship. That is messed up!
Everyone deserves to work a reasonable number of hours and still make a living, have a life worth living, with a schedule that makes sense. Maybe we can’t have the ideal life where we determine what we do with each hour, but we should all have a good, satisfying, and dignified life. We all deserve time to relax, to seek entertainment & education, to spend time with family and friends creating memories. My husband was set to take a week off in March, instead he’s been working his ass off, straight through, at a very stressful job, since New Years Day. He’s got a good job, one that grants him 3 or 4 weeks “vacation” a year. So far he’s only been able to take a day here or there, I think he’s only taken 1 or maybe 2 off honestly, July 4th, the Friday before it was just off for everyone at his job, that’s the only day. There is no way he can take time off now, everything is a mad scramble getting ready to open the school for the fall, with no actual plan for NOT opening… which will likely be forced upon them at the last minute. It’s insane. And he can’t take time in the fall, of course, or likely anything like a week off until Christmas. He will get a few days at Thanksgiving though. They had damn well better let him save all the vacation time he is unable to take now. Gods, I hope so. He needs to take at least a month straight off just to recover from this.
Gen-Xer Remix 