Time to Get Back to Work 🔥⚔️☠️

Weather: Tis summer. Tis hot. Tis Sunny. Not much more to be said.

So it’s been a while, and sadly it’s taken a horrible event to get me back to blogging.

Today, the Supreme Court overturned Roe V. Wade, thus ending federal protection of the right to abortion. Now it goes back to the states, some of which have laws on the books that pretty much set the bans to time of conception. (Good luck figuring that out, numbnuts).

We are literally barreling down the hill into full blown white nationalist theocracy. That’s not hyperbole or overexaggeration. There is nothing in the anti-abortion movement that is science based. It’s all religion.

And as someone in the sizeable percentage in this country who does not subscribe to that religion, I find that curtailing my rights in the name of something I do not believe that could actually threaten my life is something to be enraged about.

I don’t condone violence and I don’t think it solves any problems. I’m not recommending we use those tactics. However, I wonder what exactly would happen if the 70% of this country that doesn’t agree with the minority pushing the anti-choice agenda decided to just say NO – as in refuse to follow the law on this when someone’s life or health (physical or mental) are in jeopardy.

We can’t sit passively by while a minority of people, driven by a combination of white supremacy, religious hypocrisy and misogyny, continue to strip hard earned rights away from us.

Women aren’t a monolith and there are plenty out there (WW I’m looking at you specifically. Time to call you in!) who are voting against their and our best interests.

Look, I don’t expect everyone to agree on whether abortion is a good or bad thing. That’s your right to have a different opinion. But you do not get to make medical decisions on my or any other uterus bearing person’s behalf because you yourself have a problem with it. I don’t think women should get boob jobs or use Botox, but I stay in my lane because it’s not my body and I don’t know all the circumstances that may have led to a person making those decisions for themselves.

Morality is not just the realm of religion. Grown ass woman have the right to make decisions for themselves. Young girls who have endured an assault should not have to risk death and damage because you don’t agree with that right.

It’s a complex issue. I know this. Nothing like this is binary or black & white. There should be discussions. But this isn’t a discussion. This is enforced pregnancy. This is literally taking any choice away from women. Men are again not holding any accountability or responsibility, but they sure as hell are all puffed up with opinions. (You all never paid attention in biology class, and it shows.)

I’m angry, and sad for our country right now. But this didn’t happen suddenly. We’ve been ceding ground on rights for decades now. So today, make a decision. Are you just gonna gripe and wait for things to get worse? Or are you going to stand up and do something?

I’m off to do a lot of e-mailing my state reps and congress people and see what I can do to support groups that will aid women in more desperate situations than me. And this November, you can bet I’m voting against every single fucking Republican I can.

DO SOMETHING. Noone is coming to rescue you. That ship has sailed.

Transitions and Transformations

Weather: Summer’s come early! We’re bouncing around in the 70s and 80s. Drought conditions are not fun, though.

So I’ve fallen off posting here, but there have been numerous things going on that have made me set aside writing for a bit.

My age and health issues have caught up with me in the most ignominious fashion. Being a “woman of a certain age” means there are bodily and emotional changes that are happening right now, arriving with all the subtlety of a train wreck and the chaos of a zombie apocalypse. It ain’t pretty on any level.

Physically, I’m dealing with all sorts of random body aches, pains and system errors (thanks, hormones.) Emotionally, my anxiety has been showing up like random bear attacks out of the blue. Needless to say, my recent foray to the doctor resulted in new meds for my blood pressure and a second attempt at anxiety medication (it’s working this time! Whew!). After several months of feeling like crap and running the gauntlet with emotional and mental issues, I’m finally back on steady ground. It’s a weird relief not feeling like the earth is about to upend on you daily.

I’m pulling away from a lot of social media immersion, and doing more study and research. I hadn’t realized how much I’d fallen off reading until I did a small assessment of my “to be read” list of books and found the number was…disheartening. So I’m spending more time with my nose in a book rather than staring at a screen. FOMO is fading as the days go by.

Part of what fueled that shift was hearing a news report recently on aging, and it turns out that screen time, the rapid digestion of information and the resultant stress can actually cause your hippocampus (which handles learning and memory) to shrink. Reading and doing focused work, creative or otherwise, actually maintains it through building new neural pathways. The hippocampus is literally a “use it or lose it” structure in your brain, and there is some evidence that this shrinkage can lead to a higher chance of developing dementia. Needless to say, I fear that type of deterioration in my elder years, so I’m heading back to doing more things that keep my brain healthy rather than passively entertaining it. (I will err on the side of caution when it comes to these things.)

Another thing that has changed is that I’m utilizing patience much more these days. There is little that is “hair on fire” necessary or immediate happening right now. (Part of my annoyance with social media is the aspect that EVERYTHING is an immediate concern and OMG NEEDS TO BE DEALT WITH RIGHT NOW!) The doom scrolling stops here, as far as I’m concerned.

My rediscovery of my witchy roots is taking a front seat these days. I’m growing herbs, with the intent of using them for healing teas and in magical endeavors. I’m doing some deep research into ancestral practices and spending more time out doors, getting in touch with nature and the elements again. It’s balm to my soul to be honest. Music has also been helping. It’s amazing the meditative and healing energy you can get from the right piece of music. You never know what will speak to you.

Transitions and transformations happen in a escalating way, usually building exponentially as you start putting more effort into them. Our minimization process in the house has led to us shedding several large chunks of our wardrobe and scaling back on things that have been gathering dust for years. I’m finding that my emotional attachment to things is much easier to dissolve than I thought, especially where worn out clothing is concerned. I’ve parted with t-shirts I’ve carried around for years, that were no better than rags, but I liked the image on the front, or it reminded me of some place or event that I had attended. If I hadn’t worn it in years, why did I still have it? Out it went. Books too. I’ve parted with books and movies and music….and haven’t batted an eye. I don’t need to keep it to remind me I enjoyed it. Especially if I haven’t cracked it out for a look in the past 6 years.

Trust me, I don’t fault anyone else who thinks I’m nuts or couldn’t do the same themselves. You have to be ready to do this sort of deep purge. And I am ready. If you’re not, there’s no criticism from me.

My entire intent with everything above is to get me pared back to who I am now, and to create space to explore that. The husbeast and I are not ones for living in the past or lugging our entire history around with us. We’re renovating the house to reflect who we are now. We’re ridding ourselves of outdated or unused things because other might find use in them. I don’t have enough hours in the day to read all the new books I have or watch all the unwatched films and shows that are waiting for me. When would I have time to re-read or re-watch 30+ years of books and films? Plus, I need to find time to create and market and new art and jewelry as well! Time is like a pie and the more pieces you carve it into, the less time you have to spend on each.

Travel is also in the near future for the husbeast and I. We haven’t taken a proper vacation for just the two of us in well over 10 years. It’s time. The pandemic is pretty much going away slowly, and with both of us fully vaccinated, it’s time to hit the road. We have a long list of places to go visit, some here in Michigan, others all across the country. We’re probably gonna dust off our passports soon as well, and go visit Canada and the mother countries (England, Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, Finland).

I’m feeling hopeful and excited about things again. I’m going to do what I can to use my skills to help others, and get out and be in the world again. I feel like I’ve been living in a cave with a computer for too long. Time to see the actual world without a screen in the way.

Embracing The Real You

Weather: well it’s still a rollercoaster. Warm, then cold. Rain, then snow. Then warm again. April woke up and chose chaos.

I suppose the title is a gimme. We all seem to be pursuing that elusive sense of authenticity. We are raised within the confines of our parents and society’s expectations and limitations. Not all of that is necessarily bad, but a little of us gets squelched in the process.

Some things we are interested in are deemed unworthy, or unacceptable. Our self-identification, beliefs and outward appearances are kept strictly in the lines of what they deemed acceptable or at least what was not going to embarrass them. Sometimes it was just cultural norms they were raised with and feel should be perpetuated, regardless of how outdated. Sometimes it’s religious beliefs, or just simply norms that they see other people in the community setting as “standard”.

True, there are things that are good things to maintain throughout time, things regulated by law and by just being a decent human.

Ultimately, at some point, once you have left the place where you were raised, whether for school, or just moving out into your own place, you need to reassess what it means to be you and not a projection of what they think you should be.

I’m a Cis-Het woman, so I never had to wrangle with that aspect of my identity. But that doesn’t mean that I haven’t struggled with asserting certain parts of my personality or beliefs system in a way that would make me happy, but make others a little uncomfortable. The hardest thing I deal with on the daily, and is the source of my anxiety disorder, is the fear of disappointing others. It took a long time to realize that the only person I was actually disappointing was myself.

It took me until I was in my 40s to really get to the place where I was tired of trying to maintain 2 personas, one for myself and one for others. I started slowly getting more vocal in my stances on politics and religion. I started wearing the clothes I wanted to wear, coloring my hair, and pursuing things that made me happy, outlets for my creative brain that had been whirling, trapped in my head for so long.

Now I’m approaching my mid 50s and wear my blue streaked hair with pride. I can put “Witch” in my social media bios with no hesitance. I can stand strong in my allyship with the LGBTQIA+ community and spend my time working on making art and writing, knowing that I am starting to gain some income in those areas. I’m wrapping myself in the comfort of who I am and ignoring with a shrug and a knowing smile when people make snarky comments or disapprove with their looks. It’s not for them.

It’s my path. It’s my life. It impacts literally no one for me to be the person I always wanted to be and need to be. I encourage anyone who is starting this process to weigh out the pros and cons for them personally. I hope that everyone can ultimately shed that weight, the albatross of others’ expectations, that hangs around their necks. There is no condemnation for those who are not ready, or are not in a safe position to do so. Join us when you can. It’s a beautiful and peaceful place to be, when you are ready.

Savage Daughters

Weather: We’re slowly warming up to spring, though we had a touch of SNOW! SNOW, I SAY! to keep us on our toes.

I mentioned in my previous post that I would continue on my essays about housecleaning for Spring. Last post was about the physical. This will be more about the spiritual.

The title above is in reference to a song that I heard on TikTok and went in search of because it touched me so deeply. It’s a song written by Wyndreth Berginsdottir, who sings songs in the style of old Norse tunes.

The first verse is this:

I am my mother’s savage daughter
The one who runs barefoot
Cursing sharp stones

I am my mother’s savage daughter
I will not cut my hair
I will not lower my voice

My mother’s child is a savage
She looks for her omens in the colors of stones
In the faces of cats, in the falling of leaves
In the dancing of fire
In the curve of old bones

Wyndreth Berginsdottir

It’s a much longer piece and the rest of the lyrics are rife with references to heathen songs, and witchcraft and old things reawakening inside of us. It hit a nerve for me. My husband was the first to hear it and made sure he sent it to me, knowing that it would strike a chord.

You see, I come from a long line of strong women, Nordic on 3 sides (Swedish, Danish and Finnish). There’s an innate attitude of DIY and perseverance that borders on self-destructive stubbornness in all of us, and I am not immune from the effects or repercussions. I’ve inherited blue/green eyes from my great grandmother, and bad knees and arthritis from this same family line. I research our lineages on all sides, and have tracked (with my late father’s research) the Swedish and Finnish lines back to the 1500s. I’m not an obsessive about the bloodlines, but I do find the patterns of behavior and recurrent facts fascinating.

But the relevant point is that I also inherited a deep respect for nature, a love of the stars and a deep affinity for the water, whether lakes, rivers or oceans. All of those things have managed to spread out tendrils into every aspect of my spirituality, and inform my creative pursuits.

My belief system has morphed and changed over the years. I was raised Methodist, got confirmed and everything. But my parents were very much of the mind that as I was growing up, I should learn about their beliefs, and then I could make an informed opinion about how I believed. Pretty damn progressive, truth be told. During the process of my confirmation, we attended (as a class) services at different denominations to show us some similarities amongst the religions. Even with all this, after confirmation, I started researching Egyptian gods, and deep diving into other mythologies, not sure what pantheons would find me, or what my burgeoning belief system was comprised of at the time. Christianity didn’t really work for me. I had a lot of respect for the tenets but didn’t see a lot of it being practiced. I dipped my toes in paganism, deep diving into the books of Raymond Buckland, Margot Adler, Scott Cunningham and several other authors of basic witchcraft and nature based religions. (This was back in the early 80s).

Still nothing really resonated. Bits and pieces latched on, and by the time I was in my late 20s, I’d kind of formed a bit of a pastiche that didn’t really seem to fit with any particular flavor of paganism. Wicca didn’t work for me, because the rules were just as rigid as Christianity (not the same type of rules, mind you, but the same rigid calendar of rituals and rules of behavior). I was reluctant to use the word “witch”, because there were multiple subdivisions there as well. So I kind of lumbered on, in my vague cloak of beliefs, a combination of philosophies that were pinched liberally from a lot of religions, without taking the applied practices. (Appropriation is not in my nature anyway. I don’t believe in half-assing things, especially where dipping your toes into someone else’s pool is concerned. There are a lot of negative repercussions there, and I’m not just talking about judgmental feedback on social media. Universal energies do not like to be disrespected, and you won’t like the consequences.) I picked up tarot, learned to create detailed astrology charts, and garnered an impressive number of tools & herbs. I’ve had many people cross my path, who tried to use their practice as ways to garner power or attention or just as a form of manipulation. Those people I studiously sidestepped and kept on my own path. I’m a deep studier and like to make sure I thoroughly understand something before I claim it as part of my practice.

So here I am, in my mid 50s and after a lot of deep conversations with people, and much reading and practice, I’ve come around to calling myself a witch. I fall into the category of Hedge Witch, or Forest Witch, with some shamanistic views, but I’m not really comfortable wearing any of those labels whole-cloth. I am very in touch with the natural energies that run through this world, and I respect the source of those energies, though I don’t try to personify those sources. Is that a vague enough sum up for you?

Now, after that lengthy trip down memory lane, let’s get back to the idea of spiritual housecleaning. I’ve become comfortable with who I am and what I believe and how I practice it. There has been an awakening of sorts the past few years, as though I finally got the right pins in the right slots to make everything click. It required a lot of scraping off other people’s opinions, judgements and condescension to get here. I still attend Mass with my husband for some holidays, more out of habit than practice. But one ritual, if framed in way that works for you, is not that unlike any other. The housecleaning that I talk about is needing to flex those muscles again, and get in touch with the energies that I felt and know deep inside. It’s about clearing out the dreck of self-destructive behavior and listening to the world as it hums alongside us. It’s clearing out the cynicism, and the anger. Reducing the negativity so I can hear the flow. It’s a tricky thing: hearing that, sensing it. You need to have peace of mind and stillness of thought. I do hear the voices of my ancestors in the waves of the water, and the healing nature of the women of my line in the thrumming of the earth and the connection to the life it feeds.

I don’t need anyone else to believe the way I do. I also don’t need their permission, or acceptance, or even their prayers to be in touch with what I consider a higher power. I also don’t need to proselytize my beliefs or condemn their beliefs. It’s a delicate balance, that could make things so much more easy if we could all stay in our lane. Harm none- it’s at the foundation of every belief system. Not everyone realizes it, or practices it, which is a shame.

I know that we all have a connection to each other, and to the earth and its life. That is where my spirituality lives. Moving forward, I am practicing my faith, for want of another term, as unapologetically as I can.

(art credit unknown. Search in process for credit)

Resets and Reboots

Weather: Back on the rollercoaster: It’s in the 60s! It’s snowing! It’s raining! It’s tornado season! WOOHOO! March doing its best to fill the stereotype.

So I’ve been yammering on about all the changes that I need to make and how they’re gonna be great and…I hit the beginning of April like a brick wall. I had a ton to do and no idea where to start.

Getting the vaccine was a miniscule first step to shedding my comfort clothes of the quarantine. I mean that in the sense that for the past year I haven’t left my house, except to help my Mom who was going through Chemo, and to get various medical things done for myself. Other than that, it’s been pretty much me, my husbeast and our cat, hunkered down and riding out the plague with utmost stiff upper lip (hidden behind a mask) and lots of handwashing.

Getting back out into the world, with no over-hanging Sword of Damocles, still seems a hazy dream on the horizon, but it’s coming. The thing is, and I’ve seen several others mention this, I don’t want to “go back to normal”. I want different. I want BETTER. (And I’m not talking about financial well being or seeing people).

What I want is to take the opportunity of everyone re-setting at the same time, and build something better from the foundation up.

There’s a difference between a reset and a reboot. A reboot, you’re just hoping the damn thing works like normal and we move on from there. Maybe a little cleaner, maybe with a little less cumbersome baggage, but mostly the same. A reset…well.. there’s room for improvement there.

I see the way the world is nowadays. And it wasn’t great before the ‘Rona side swiped us. Sure we had moments, times when things got a little better, and things worked a little smoother. But let’s face it– things always seem to settle back into the old patterns and the bad behaviors returned. Of course, we’ve had one of the worst enablers of bad behavior running the country the past four years, so I guess I shouldn’t have expected miracles. (FYI- Not making a political swipe here, I’m talking about personal behavior. The political part…oof. I don’t have the time or energy.)

So what I guess I’m hoping for, and what I’ll be striving for (and happily have already started doing) is attempting a reset across the board. Cutting out the waste and the energy thieves and the things that are doing the soft damage to me and the world around me. I’m listening to people. I’m paying attention to the words under the words. I’m clearing out the clutter, not just the physical junk, but the mental and spiritual as well. I’m taking the house, so to speak, back to the studs and gonna try and rebuild something better, something different.

We get so comfortable with the way things were that we find ourselves craving the normalcy of things that were not good for us in the first place.

It’s not my place to judge your comfort zone, but take a good hard look at your life, at your environment. Don’t judge your mess morally, just with a cursory eye towards how much energy it’s taking to maintain. If things are making you miserable, why do you still have them? (Mind you, I said THINGS. I know that certain health issues are a big source of misery for all of us. Those are sometimes outside our ability to fix.) I’m talking about the things that we surround ourselves with. Clutter isn’t just a physical thing.

It’s not easy. No significant change is ever easy. Some may not be ready for it. And that’s fine too.

Now is the time for me. Maybe it’s my age colliding with the year of staring at all the things around me to the point where I am striving to find any emotional connection to the things I have here. Keeping things used to make me happy. Plus, I come from the generation that pre-dates digital streaming, cloud storage and Google. Needless to say, about a good 90% of things that I’ve carted around with me for the past 30+ years are not really adding value to my life. The experiences are still in my memory. The music is easily available online. The articles and paper reproductions are out there on the Internet. Nothing I’ve been hauling from house to house in boxes needs to be kept in a filing cabinet or alphabetized on a shelf.

I think there is something to be said about using other things to try and define me, having items to show others to make some sort of declaration of who I am as a person. See! I have these particular books, so you can see I am smart and read interesting things. I have these posters and these collectibles, so you can see I am a fan of these types of movies and like this aesthetic. All the items that I have collected, cobbling together an external personification of all the things I love, like a museum of my brain and heart, to roll out whenever new friends arrive, to say “Here! This is me in an easy illustration!” Sigh.

The problem that arises is my tastes change over time, my aesthetic has gone through several incarnations and, while I still love all those books and movies and music, they are gathering dust on shelves and in boxes, like mummified versions of previous selves. I don’t regret having spent the money on them, and I feel like I got their money’s worth out of them, but now they’re just…things I have to re-pack up when we move, that will go on to take up shelf space that could go to new books, or just could be open space instead of a crowded room of cobweb covered relics.

Nostalgia used to be categorized as a mental health issue. Did you know that? Granted it was centuries ago, but there is some credibility to the idea. In small doses, it’s a comfort. But as with all things, too much becomes a burden and we end up only looking backwards to the things we enjoyed as a younger person. I found the worst part of nostalgia is the lie we tell ourselves that something was the BEST THING WE EVER <insert verb: ate, saw, heard>. I went back and watched a film I absolutely loved as a teen, and honestly? I hated it. Not that I didn’t remember how much I loved it, but that was the only thing that brought me joy. The memory of enjoying it. The actual movie was horribly dated, the music cheesy and the special effects made me groan. (Mind you there are a ton of older films I still love, but it’s a different feeling. They weren’t of my era, so they don’t feel dated the same way.)

So I’m moving forward and starting to cut the cord behind me. Doesn’t mean that any of these things aren’t still a fond memory for me. But I don’t need to house everything that has a memory attached. I can be selective and find better ways to retain those things that don’t require boxes in the basement. I’ll donate what’s in good shape, recycle what I can and pitch the rest.

Mentally and spiritual housecleaning are a little more involved and I’ll write more on those going forward.

I hope that a by stripping things back to only those that have purpose and value, I’ll be able to have a better sense of myself and a more time and energy to focus on things I want to do. New experiences, new memories, and less baggage.

Vaccines and Other Small Victories

Weather: So lovely and warm the past few days. Rainy as well, but we need it. (Midwestern thing. We say this every time it rains.)

Got my first dose of the Covid vaccine this past Tuesday: Moderna, even though I would have been fine with any of them. Haven’t suffered any side effects other than a bit of a sore arm and some fatigue. Worth it.

Please get vaccinated so we can finally get out of this quarantine hellscape. I know it’s going to still be some time until we are able to get back to less fraught interactions, but it’s a big step in the right direction. I’m still bitter over where we could have been at this point, but that’s a different post. And requires a lot of salty language I just don’t have time for right now.

I consider the vaccine one of my few small victories of late, mostly because it symbolizes a movement forward. Stagnancy has been a big problem for me and a lot of other people in my circle. Not because the will isn’t there, but for one reason or another (mostly Covid), the resources haven’t been there, or the players had scheduling or travel issues. Creativity has kind of gone in one of two directions: either exploding or flat out dying on the vine.

Trying to get a book written when you’re in a constant state of anxiety is a non-starter for me. Add in a foggy brain when trying to concoct mosaic designs or jewelry… you see where I’m going with this. I picked up crocheting to add to my stitch skills (along with cross-stitch needlework) but that’s become more therapeutic hobby than anything else.

So, small victory number two this week was finally getting my craft room/office organized. It still needs work, but I’ve conquered the nesting that was starting to happen. I can see the top of my crafting table and my filing cabinet. My desk is still in progress. It’s amazing how much easier it is to think and plan when you aren’t surrounded by clutter.

I’m starting to reach the headspace where I want less things around me and more space to create. I’m finding that value is coming in amount of time and what things mean to me. It took a long time to realize that I was holding onto things that were only valuable to me as something I could show to someone else. Like “look! I have this [book, item, picture etc].” to which they’d respond “that’s so cool!” and I could ride that validation for months. But most of my friends and family have seen the stuff and a lot of it is sitting collecting dust, not getting any use, or giving me any kind of satisfaction. In fact, I’ve started resenting its presence as a dust collector. Maturity? Anxiety? Boredom? Who knows. All I know is it’s not doing me any good just sitting on a shelf or stuck in a closet. So off to donation it goes, so someone else can give it some attention or love.

Small victories are sometimes better than the big ones in that they don’t come with as much work or sacrifice, yet give you a moment of satisfaction that you aren’t just standing still or spinning your wheels. We like to praise people to great levels when they accomplish something big, like ran a marathon or completed a college degree and yes, both those things are admirable and worth the compliments. But sometimes, when you’ve spent a week on the couch, depressed, or overwhelmed, and the dust and clutter is starting to seem insurmountable, sometimes just getting the coffee table cleared off and the dishes into the dishwasher can seem like crossing the finish line.

On the creative front, I’ve printed out several of my recent manuscripts in progress and I’m attempting to mark them up with a pen, rather than trying to squelch my easy distractions online. If I can get through a few pages each day, it feels like progress. If I can get some new scenes committed to paper and then transcribed into Scrivener, it seems like I might actually get the ball rolling again. I’m starting to get some design ideas for mosaics again. And I’ve moved my jewelry fixings into the craft room from the basement. It feels like with spring finally rearing its weary head, my malaise is evaporating. It feels a little like hope and possibility.

And sometimes…sometimes, that is all the taste of victory I need to get myself back into the battle. Bigger victories will come, but for now, I’ll keep grabbing a toehold where I can and leveraging myself upward.

Fresh Starts and Harsh Realities

Weather: Spring is in the air! We’ve been hovering between the low 60s and the upper 40s. The lion/lamb rollercoaster that is March is in full effect!

So the New Moon rose on this past Saturday and brought with it the usual pronouncements of fresh starts and new beginnings, as the start of a new lunar cycle tends to bring. My belief in Astrology is usually couched in utilizing the advice given as the planets spin through the various constellations and celestial positions as guideposts to tackle situations and current ideas. I don’t put much faith in the predictions of most horoscopes, but I like to think the words can be interpreted to apply to my daily concerns, thus giving me a little focus.

The new and full moons always mark the peak and the nadir of monthly cycles, thus giving easily applied deadlines to shoot for and a little motivation to work things out on that cycle. I always try and give myself achievable deadlines, as the energy waxes and wanes. No provable evidence that this necessarily improves the odds of me achieving these goals, but it gives me a measure of time that I can track. Maybe it’s the astrological equivalent of a placebo, but it works for me, so why mess with it?

This month has been hard focused on renovation on our house, getting healthier, stabilizing our finances, and purging years of accumulated stuff. Pretty hefty goals for one month, but weirdly enough, we’re already making pretty good headway on a few of them. We’ve both gotten our first Covid vaccines scheduled, ordered new blinds for the windows and have started filling boxes with books and clothes for donation. Every time something gets checked off the list, we feel a little surge of relief.

So that’s the fresh starts part of my piece today. The harsh realities part is a little more…well, tricky.

I’ve been finding lately, in my rabbit hole travels on TikTok (hush!) and Instagram and every other social media site that has its hooks in me, that the time between finding out an interesting anecdote and discovering the reality of the truth about that anecdote is rapidly shrinking. Far from the kind of person who trusts unsourced info, I do have a bad habit of latching onto some interesting bit of science or wellness info, and getting a little excited about it. Nearly every time, within hours it seems, something else will come out to debunk it. There’s a little bit of disappointment and sullen, stubborn denial that builds in me.

It took a while for me to realize where that reaction was sourced from, but once I did, I was annoyed all over again. The disappointment, I have figured out, is a visceral reaction to being denied a simple easy path to a reward. Doesn’t matter if that reward is a device to make my life easier or a set of information to shorten the path to better health. It’s so bothersome to get my hopes up that I’ve found a way to fix something that is easier, quicker or at the minimum, less complicated. Alas, reality re-asserts itself and I’m stuck back at square one, realizing that the path is still difficult and will take time. Sigh.

The reason I paired these two concepts is that I am slowly pulling back from a lot of online time investment. I’ve recently heard the concept of time poverty and that was a harsh wash of cold water. The concept of time poverty usually refers to people who work long hours, whether it be because of understaffing or multiple jobs, and do not have any time available for scheduling self care (Doctor’s appointments, hobbies for stress relief, family time.) As I’m technically unemployed, any time poverty I experience is due to bad time management on my part, not any burden from a demanding job. The effect is much the same.

Internet comfort food is carving out way too much of my time that could be spent better on more healthy pursuits. Also, I need to move more. Not even exercise–I’m talking about prying my butt out of the chair and setting down my phone, or mouse, and moving around the house, or going for a walk. My legs are starting to swell from my lack of movement and that is unacceptable. Joints are not loving the added weight either. It’s less about getting skinny and more about just having my body functioning at a healthy level. Getting older isn’t for the faint of heart. If I want to match my great grandfather, who lived to 104, I’m gonna have to take my life pursuits a bit more serious. So better time management is needed. Besides, I’m tired of looking up from the internet to find I’ve spent my entire afternoon, bleary eyed and mushy brained, attached like a drooling addict to my screens. A little is fine, but all day? Yeah, that’s gonna stop.

Besides, Spring is almost here! And I’d like to get back outside. I’m getting vaccinated so my paranoia is finally gonna be tempered. (I’m still gonna be cautious- I’m not an idiot. Masks and social distancing are still needed until we reach herd immunity.)

So, to distill this down to the TL;DR summary- Use this time to make a fresh start for yourself. Realize that we’re emerging from a bit of a chaotic haze, so be gentle with yourself, be cautious, but also, be more aware of the reality of things. It may not be as glossy or pretty as we like, but there’s a beauty in the harsh light of day we need to get back to if we are going to heal.

Oh Gods. It’s March again!

Weather: Starting to warm up towards Spring! In the upper 40s and flirting with the 50s, with plenty of sunshine. Snow is melting and it’s starting to feel like the world is waking up again. Bring on the green!

We joke about 2020 feeling like just endless March due to the Covid lockdown/quarantine/cave dwelling, but damn if the PTSD didn’t kick in when I flipped the calendar over to March again this year. Ugh.

Had a few epiphanies kinda drop on my noggin the past week and wanted to share, in case the might help others. First, I realized how much of my day was getting eaten up by mindless scrolling on the interwebs. Not just social media, but news sites, and even some go-to research sites. The web can be ever-so-helpful in stimulating our brains with new information and amusements, but it pushes the same big red button mentally and emotionally that comfort food and fuzzy blankets seem to push. It’s a bit of a drug in that way. And boy oh boy, do we love our comfort foods, especially now with the plague stealing our joy and connection to others.

Like all comfort foods, there’s a difference between snacking on them now and then as a treat, and making them the entirety of our diet. The former is good for our mental health, the latter, not so much. Also, subsisting solely on comfort foods can dull down your consciousness, your intuition and also decimate your time management. It’s just flat out not healthy for you on every level. So try and step away from your technology for a bit. Allow yourself to be bored. Believe it or not, but in the boredom is where creativity blooms. 😏

This year of being shut in and away from people has made us all look for alternative ways to connect, and I know for some, that need is much more pressing than for others. But understand that connecting with other people via Zoom or FaceTime is a different animal than spending energy on fights with strangers or absorbing the misery avalanche that occurs when you immerse yourself in the news for too long. Seek an amiable form of connection. Comfort food should comfort, after all. FOMO will never be satisfied and it’s a fools errand to keep chasing that dragon.

I know my anxiety has skyrocketed in the past few weeks, but I think for me that has to do more with the fact that my hormones have decided to join some sort of art collective and have performative outbursts on the regular. So annoying!

In better mental health news, I was able to finally sign up for the Covid 19 vaccine this morning. Actually cried from relief just seeing the confirmation for the appointment. Didn’t realize how emotional waiting for the damn thing had made me. Now just gotta get the husbeast his shots and we’ll be set! (He’s a few years younger than me and was just below the age cut off for the vaccine here in Michigan). But in two weeks I’ll have my first shot done and I can start breathing a little. (Obligatory reminder to get your vaccine when your time comes, any of them. Please help get us to a high degree of herd immunity so ALL of us can start hanging out again! IN PERSON!)

One little self-congratulatory thing for me– I finally got off my prodigious derriere and started stretching & doing some limited exercises. I also printed out my last few manuscripts so I can start manually editing them. I’m finding that editing on the computer is not advisable for someone like myself who is easily distracted, so I’m resorting to paper, pen and post-its for this go around. I’m trying my best to get myself back to reasonably functional again, both physically and mentally. We’ll see how things go. Spring is on the way, so it’s time to shed my usual winter doldrums and get back to work!

That’s all for today. I hope everyone is starting to scrape off the last year as best they can and start pursuing life again. I know it’s been hard and tragic and just flat out exhausting by turn. Lift your head and give yourself patience and room to trip a bit. It’s like getting back on the bike after a long hiatus. The muscle memory is there, but it’ll take time to get the rest of you caught up. Do it for yourself, no one else.

Missed Opportunities

Weather: We’re finally MELTING! Temps above freezing and no snow in the forecast for a while. Whee! Spring is on the near horizon!

The impetus for writing this blog is bittersweet. I’ve been doing some genealogy work, picking up where my dad left off. He had filing cabinets full of hard copy, handwritten correspondence and tons of badly Xeroxed documentation– just folder after folder of family info for relatives so distantly related I’m going blind just trying to follow the threads. Thank the benevolent deities my dad had impeccable handwriting, thanks to all his years training in drafting.

I’ve been slowly uploading his info into Ancestry, trying to get a digital record of all his work, before the paper starts disintegrating. I wish he were here to consult with on some members of the family (Dad passed in 2006), since there are a lot with similar names and multiple marriages, resulting in a lot of children. Ook. Very convoluted. Plus add in several countries worth of documentation: Denmark, Sweden, Finland, England etc. I don’t speak the Scandinavian languages and my mum, who is Danish, is helpful, but also not available 24/7 to translate. (Time to get my language skills shored up!) So, it’s been getting to be more of an effort the further back I go. Dad had records back to at least the 1500s on several lines of the family. Fascinating, and frustrating, by turns.

Anyway, I had just brought home some more documentation from my mom’s house to start compiling and filling in the blanks on some relatives, when I came across a folder for my dad’s father, known as Grandpa Ted. He passed in 1978, so I was only 11 years old at the time. My grandmother had passed when I was six, so I really never got a chance to discuss family stuff with them or have the kind of talks about their past that you could have when you were in your twenties and knew the kind of follow-up questions that could garner all the interesting facts.

So finding this folder was a gold mine of info. My Grandpa had worked most of his life as an engineer, but had found a second sort of career in retirement as a weaver. He made tapestries in wool thread, that he dyed himself, on a loom that he built himself. With little training, he produced several wall hanging rugs, often depicting the mission churches that populated the countryside in New Mexico, where he and my grandmother moved when he retired. He also did a few pieces for local businesses. I have several of his rugs hanging in my house right now. They’re beautiful and intricate and the work is so detailed it sometimes blows my mind.

We grew up surrounded by these rugs. My mom still has several hanging in her house as well. But I never really gave much beyond their surface beauty a thought.

In this folder, in the dusty box I retrieved from my mom’s house, there were articles about his work, interviews with him, at length, talking about how he got into weaving, how he created the threads and the loom. I could hear him talking in a long forgotten memory of the sound of his voice. I got, as expected, teary eyed.

You see, I keep finding these little bit of info about my family that I didn’t know growing up. Information that would have been a comfort and a support of my creative impulses, that always had made me feel weird and outside the norm with my peers and what was expected of me. I just found out recently that my grandmother’s father (My great grandfather) was a mason. My dad was always a fantastic graphic designer, although he made his career in business instead. My mom is an artist in her own right, although she will wave off any compliments on her work.

I think the reason I titled this piece “Missed Opportunities” is because I sometimes feel a deep seated anger at the course that my life has taken, and how all these people have left my life before I was ever able to ask them about things that could have helped me figure out that being an artist wasn’t weird, or a fool’s pursuit, or was perfectly understandable considering the sheer amount of DNA in my system that came from creative people. I look now back at my family tree and it is literally rife with musicians, writers, artists of so many different disciplines, yet I grew up believing that creativity was fine as a hobby, but not a serious pursuit. Missed opportunities, that still ended up appearing, repeatedly, as I keep coming back to art and creative outlets, because that is the only pursuit that brings me joy and peace of mind. So many resources that I can only access second hand now. I miss them all, and I can only hope that even if my path has been divergent and obstacle strewn over the years, I am doing their memories proud.

If you feel the need, in your bones, to make things, to create– DO IT. Start as a hobby. Try it on. If you’re meant to do it, you’ll keep at it. It’s taken me until I was in my 40s to find my niche, but I have it now. And I won’t let anymore time pass as I keep working. Will I be good at all of it? Probably not. But my grandfather was an engineer for most of his life, and ended up a weaver in his later years. Maybe I’ll follow in his footsteps, and be a late bloomer. Thank the gods for my dad’s diligent recordkeeping. It’s just given me a huge boost to pursue what I love. And for that, I will always love him.

Miss you, Dad. Miss you, Grandpa. Hope my work does you proud.

Me With One of My Grandpa’s Rugs

The full rug. We called it the Lollipop Tree

Winter Musings

Weather: Oh dear god, SNOW SNOW AND MORE SNOW!!! AND COLD! (Typical Michigan Winter in other words!)

So I’ve fallen off the blogging bandwagon for a bit, mostly due to health and brain foo. Plus there’s been a metric ton of snow that has needed to be shoveled. So far, we have accumulated approximately 18 inches in general, with drifting as deep as two feet in spots. Doesn’t seem like a lot until you have to shovel it in single digit temps. But being a Midwesterner, you just layer up and get out and do it, knowing there are warm beverages and food waiting for you when it’s done. So much soup and tea and casseroles, I tell you!

Currently, the state of Texas is suffering from a rare snow storm — thanks Polar Vortex!– and a lot of people are in the dark and freezing due to some stupid bad planning on the part of their state government when it comes to their energy infrastructure. Help is being sent (Thanks, POTUS!) , but I feel terrible for the people who are not used to this cold and are not equipped for it. I have family and friends who are going on their third day of no power in 20º temps. Makes me angry when suffering is preventable and the powers that be take no accountability. But that’s a rant for another time. Keeping all the citizens in my thoughts. The officials are getting a different type of energy sent their way. Don’t piss of witches, is all I’m saying. 🧙🏻‍♀️🤨

It’s been a relatively normal winter here, but after 4 years of being spoiled., it feels worse for some reason. Probably a side effect of getting older. Feeling the cold in my joints more. Sigh.

On the project/ work front, I’m getting back to writing (I have so many damn books pending!) and working on crocheting/stitch craft in my spare time. I’m still trying to get my mosaic/jewelry work sorted. Time has gotten away from me, lost in some sort of navel gazing, self-pitying. stress induced haze. I started falling down the rabbit hole that is TikTok, mostly because the app doesn’t stress me out the way social media does. I’m finding that now that his orangeness is out of the WH, I’m finding the news to be a bit, refreshingly, boring. Not that there aren’t things that are still worrisome, or noteworthy, but I’m finding that knowing that there is someone at the top actually getting things back on track, I’m kinda less worried at an existential level. I’m also finding that I’m struggling with the self-flagellation that occurs when you exit the stress bubble and realize that not only did you lose an entire year to obsessing over every single news item, but you lost every inch of ground you had gained, health and wellness-wise, from the gym and therapy and overall living in the actual world. Of course we’re still dealing with Covid, so until both the husbeast and I are vaccinated, that is going to curtail a lot of activities I’d like to be doing. Soon, I hope. Both our parents are vaccinated so there’s a little relief there. My mum is 90% done with her cancer treatment. Things are starting to look up. Finances are still a bit sketchy, but we’re making do.

Bri and I have decided to start renovating the house. Mostly because we’re just fecking bored with the current design and colors, and a lot of our furniture is approaching the 20+ year wear and tear level. But there is another bludgeoning reality that we are probably going to be here for longer than we initially thought, so we are motivated to do some structural and cosmetic work here for us and, of course, for the future sale of the place. So I imagine there will be periodic house reno posts with photos in the upcoming year!

I’m also starting to pare down some skills I want to scrape the rust off, including some coding skills, research and professional skills that I haven’t used in a few years. Not sure what I want to start doing as a job (we need more income to finance our house reno addiction), but I’ll be blunt, I really am trying my damndest to get away from customer service. (Not easy and beggar’s can’t be choosers, yadda yadda yadda). We’ll see what happens.

Hope everyone is staying warm and safe in the current weird weather shenanigans! I promise to be a little more consistent with the posting here.