I jotted some notes throughout the day on our diary day, but honestly, it’s 4 days later and I’m just now getting to sit down and think about my day enough to write about it. It’s hard to know if it’s just this time of the year that has me so busy or if everyone is just this busy all the time. It seems like it’s getting worse – the busyness of life – but maybe everyone else has always been this busy and I’m just now catching up? I don’t know; I don’t like it though. I haven’t had time to sit and reflect and think for ages – a couple of weeks at the very least – and sitting and thinking is what I do best! Ha!! I’m a strong introvert; I like being around people, but it utterly exhausts me and I need a lot of recoup time, time I haven’t taken since … honestly, for several months now, since I started working with MARRC (Muncie Afghan Refugee Resettlement Committee). But I’m getting ahead of myself – and being scattered. Let me go through my day (which is anally recorded in my calendar) to make sure I capture the things I want to say.
730: I wake up and hit the ground running. M and I usually sit and have coffee with the boys to start our day, but not today! There’s too much to do, for both of us. He has to be out of the house by 9 and I have some work to get done before my 11 meeting. So it’s make coffee, get ready, take the boys for a walk, make my coffee, and eat breakfast. The whole morning routine is set to the sound of Through My Eyes by Ruby Bridges, the audiobook I finish as breakfast ends. Not an uplifting way to start the day, honestly. The part of the book that really sticks out to me is when Ruby stops eating lunch, and her psychologist finds out it’s likely because a white woman screamed that she’s poison Ruby every morning when she walked to school – a lone black child, escorted by white guards, amid the hate and anger of white protesting parents who wouldn’t let their children go to school with her. 6 years old. She was 6 years old when a white woman screamed at her, repeatedly, that she wanted to kill her simply because she was going to school. What in the actual fuck is wrong with people? I often wonder about people like that – people who protested against something like integration or gay marriage. Who are they now? What do they think about the things they said or did? Do they still feel that way? Are they ashamed or proud? And it’s not like those things don’t happen today – where are the Charlottesville neo-Nazi protestors? Or the January 6th insurrectionists? It’s harder to imagine them having a change of heart so quickly, but will they? Will they look back on their decisions and regret them? With the very core of my being, I don’t understand people like this. How is it possible to remove yourself so entirely from those around you that you no longer see them as human? How can you want to cause pain and harm to another person, especially someone you don’t know? I don’t ask how one person can hate another person. Unfortunately, I know what that feels like. I wish I didn’t, but I have never wished harm on the person I hate (or hated, more accurately). I truly never even wished them will. Maybe I hated what they did more than I hated them, as a human being, maybe that’s the different? I don’t know, but the way people treat each other breaks my heart. This has been on my mind a lot these days because of my work with the Afghan refugees. Hearing just bits and pieces of their stories wrecks me, tears my heart. I feel it, physically, my own pain cause by their suffering – it’s a boulder in my soul, at the center of my chest. It’s hard to breath around; it’s hard to feel around. And it’s a fraction of a fraction of what they’re experiencing. And someone caused all of it. How do they live with themselves, knowing the suffering they’ve caused? How can they treat another living person that way? It’s completely and utterly baffling to me … and it’s only 10 am. This is my life these days.
10: more coffee. I switched to decaf several months ago. So, my first cup in the morning is regular, but I can’t do regular after that or I can’t sleep, so instead I typically drink 5-6 cups of decaf. Funny how I started drinking coffee in spite of the taste – for the caffeine only – and now I drink it entirely for the taste (and warmth!). Same with beer. I taught myself to like beer, and now I like it so much that I drink non-alcoholic beer because I’m trying (and mostly succeeding) to limit my alcohol consumption. But I digress … again. Clearly, I haven’t taken the time to get my thoughts out for a while!
Other than drinking coffee, the real goal of this hour is data analysis. I’m working on a project for a state agency – I feel like I’ve been working on it for half my life at this point – and we’re finally at the data analysis stage. My plan is to get the analysis done this week so I can write up a draft report next week and, hopefully, take the last 2 weeks of December off. Fingers crossed. I keep getting small chunks of time like this for the work though, so it doesn’t look good …
11: My job has a big event this time every year, and I’m heading over there this morning. On my way, I start another audiobook, my 120th (audio or regular) book for the year. I still haven’t started listening to the news like I used to, but I also don’t want to be in my head too much, so audiobooks it is! This one is The Silence by Don Delindo, and it’s only 3 hours long. Score.
The work event is fine – a big crowd, everyone is happy to do it again after last year’s hiatus, I think. It’s slightly different because of COVID restrictions – the tables farther apart, etc. I see some work colleagues I haven’t seen in months, and it’s good to catch up with them. Mostly it’s an obligation – not something I really enjoy being at, but that I need to show up for. It gave me an excuse to actually wear my work clothes and heals though, so I’m happy. I do have to leave early, though. I’ve wondered if and when one of these diary days would fall on a therapy day, and it finally has.
On the way to my appointment, I listen to the new audiobook, but by the time I get there I don’t have a clue what’s happening … something about the 2022 Superbowl? People going crazy? I guess that’s appropriate pre-therapy listening – ha!
1: I’ve been seeing this therapist for several months now. My previous one moved back to Michigan at the end of the summer. I like this new one better, actually, although it was a little weird that she’s younger than me (at least I’m pretty sure she is). That happens as you get older – all your service people eventually are younger than you. I guess it’s just something to get used to. She pushes me in a way that other therapists haven’t for a long time though, and I like that. My homework since my last session was to cry. Ha. Such a dilemma: I’m really good at homework, and I’m shit at crying. I need to – I know I do – I can feel it. I know exactly when the last 3 times I’ve really cried were: when my pets died. One was 3.5 years ago. I used to cry a lot as a kid, or even as a younger person, but now it’s like that boulder in my soul is blocking the tears-spout and only trickles get through. I’ll tear up occasionally, but that’s it. So, what do I have to report to my therapist? Oddly, I teared up several times this month with happy things. Mostly animal videos where neglected animals found their forever homes, or when a lost animals is reunited with their people. Okay; I just went with it. I let myself tear up. I legit cried for about 30 second when I was really frustrated with something. Nothing much, but better than nothing at all. My therapist and I talk about how this inability to cry or show emotion is likely the result of a protection strategy that no longer serves me. As a very sensitive person, I think this is probably true. My emotions were always a source of amusement or irritation to my family as a kid, and when I got older, I never felt like I had a safe place to express my emotions, so I repressed them instead. Yay me. Now would be a great time to be able to cry – I feel that need, but I’m also a little bit afraid to let myself because I don’t know if I could stop. The world feels so overwhelming these days, and the bad news keeps coming. How do you let yourself feel for a world that’s so broken without letting the brokenness overwhelm you? This is a balance that I haven’t figured out how to strike yet …
2: My planner just says “Target.” I remember going to Target after my appointment, but I don’t remember what for …
3-330: phone meeting with a colleague about a project we’re working on. She has some results and wants to chat about them. Easy-peasy. She’s a good colleague and sweet person, and super smart to-boot!
330: Cleaning the basement for C, and now I remember what I was doing at Target!! Towels! So, M and I have a friend who comes to Muncie pretty regularly to accompany students in their recitals (she’s a pianist), and she usually stays in our upstairs guest room (she lives about 6 hours away). This time, however, we unexpectedly have another friend staying with us in that bedroom. She and her fiancé broke up recently, and she needed a place to stay until she goes home for Christmas and moves into a new apartment when she gets back, so she’s here but that means that C can’t stay in that room. It’s a great excuse for us to get our basement bedroom and bathroom cleared up for someone to use. We want to remodel it eventually, but it’s still functional as a room – just kind ugly. Ha! BUT – we don’t have towels in that bathroom, so … more towels from Target.
4-530: Cookies! M and I have a small group holiday party tonight and I’m making chocolate chip cookies to bring with us. A friend of mine is dealing with some difficult things in her business right now and needed to talk, so I told her to come over while I make cookies. If it were anyone else, I’d feel awkward about making cookies while a friend is laying their burdens bare, but we’re really close and she knows I’m still listening and caring – I still get pissed in all the right places, and consoling and frustrated and playful. I give her the whisk to lick. She has to leave before the first batch is out of the oven, but I promise to bring some buy later tonight. So, in between batches, I clean the house and get ready for C. to arrive. Did I mention that I took the afternoon off? Because, clearly …
530: Several days ago, M asked me, “do you mind if I make an observation …” ha! Never a good sign. His observation was that I have too much on my plate, and I need to consider removing some of it. He was right, of course. I had been thinking the same thing, but it took him saying it that made me act finally. So, with MARRC, I’ve been acting in 2 capacities: the chair of a committee and a position on the leadership committee. I’ve easily been working 15-20 hours a week on it all, and I haven’t felt like I’ve done either position very well, so at the beginning of the week I let the leadership committee know that I needed to find a replacement chair. Within a couple of days, we had one lined up, and I met her today at my house. A was super sweet and I’m really excited to have someone else take over this aspect of the committee! We went over all the responsibilities and I answered her questions. I’ll stay on as co-chair through our next couple of families, but hopefully by the end of the year, she’ll have it all. It feels so good just to know that someone else will be taking this – it’s like I can see a little patch of blue sky! I have one more thing that I’m moving off my plate soon, and I’m worried about it. I’m on another board and I need to leave 6 months before my tenure is over. I’ve been on it for 2.5 years already, and the position isn’t serving me any longer. Maybe that sounds selfish, but I have very limited space and time, and I don’t want to fill it up with something that not only doesn’t serve me but actually hurts me. It’s been a REALLY tough board to be on in a much different way than MARRC is. The work for that board isn’t hard, but people I engage with on that board are actually pretty horrible. Plus, when I started that board I had no idea that MARRC would come up, and so much of my time goes to that now. It’s just time to let the other board go …
A left at 615, and I honestly don’t know what I did until we left for our holiday party at 7. Sat on the couch and stared, probably.
7: Time for the party. So. Much. Peopling. It was fun to see everyone though. It’s a small group we have through church, although we’ve mostly broken away from the church at this point. It was a little awkward because our friends who were engaged are both in the group … and they haven’t told anyone else yet … I mean, it’s fine for us, it was just hard to see how hard it was for both of them to be there and act like nothing had happened …
One of the things I love about this group is how much we all good food, so there was tons! One of my friends makes this amazing cheese ball with completely fake cheese so I can eat it, and it’s my favorite thing of the season. Seriously. It’s amazing.
We’re also a pretty geeky group, so we have a book and bottle exchange at our holiday parties. I got The Power of Habit and some whisky; M got a book of Pablo Neruda poems and some bourbon. Actually, it was mostly whisky and bourbon. I brought gin and someone else brough wine, but that was it. Ha! We had a little tasting party at the end of the night so we could all try each other’s liquor, and then went home. All in all, a good time! I’m always happen when things end before 10! Ha!!
We got home around 930; C had just barely beat us there but was exhausted, so she was already in bed. We watched a TV show, Wheel of Time, did some Spanish on DuoLingo, and went to bed by 11. Somewhere in the day I finished the audiobook I started – the one with the football game … I literally have no idea what the whole thing was about. The moment that people realize the world is ending? Pre-post-apocalyptic literature? Maybe it felt too real, so my brain zoned it out …