Category: blogging

Endings

My life is a shitshow, so what better time to restart this habit.

My father had a stroke at the beginning of February.  About a month ago he passed away. And because life knows how to pile it on, in that time my relationship of the last almost three years fell apart, so I’m single again.

Backing up, for a second, because this wasn’t supposed to be that year. I just started a new job in January, two weeks before my dad’s stroke.  Two endings and a beginning.

The other day, someone asked me if I’d gone back to work yet. And I was flabbergasted. Whose life did this person think I was living? That is not how it works in my reality. I haven’t taken a single day off since my father passed. In all the time since the stroke, I’ve only taken two days, the week it first happened. It never occurred to me to not go to work. I have to work. Is this a thing that people do? Just stop everything when someone dies? I get the requisite bereavement leave my company offers in this case, five days. I am saving those to help my mom move out of her house later this month, because that’s our reality. While my father was alive, they had a decent income, but they were paycheck-to-paycheck like most of America. They didn’t have any savings. Just steady pension and retirement checks. And the second that he passed, most of the income went with him. My mom is boned, and there isn’t any time for either of us to fall apart.

It sounds luxurious, to be honest. So decadent, to stop working because my father died. To fall apart for even a moment feels like something reserved for the upper-crust of socioeconomic strata. How elegant. Does the fainting couch come standard with that plan? And the on-call doctor with a bottle of valium.

So I power through, like I’ve always done. I go to work. I’ve flown back and forth to my mom’s house every two to three weeks, slowly slipping into debt that hopefully, someday I can get out from under. And if I’m honest, I’ve drunk more than is probably necessary. I haven’t even remotely begun to grieve. First things first, and someone has to keep it together.

I hope I keep writing. I have a lot of material right now, honestly. This I have to say about how hard it is to find out information about services and housing available to an elderly, low-income parent. That there should be a number like 1-800-MYPARENTSAREOLD. There’s all the lessons my parents have taught me of the “what not to do” variety. About the importance of a durable power of attorney, and the fact that you’re never too young to make sure you have one for your parents.  About wills, lawyers, real estate, estate liquidators, medicaid, medicare, hospice, and the VA. Maybe I’ll write about some of that, or maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll write about being single again, suddenly, and what it’s like to be a single woman in her 40s in the age of Tinder, or maybe I’ll go nowhere near that crap. Hopefully I’ll find whatever humor there may be in this situation.

I’ve been through so much. I’ll get through this. Want to come along for the ride?

Too much?

Do you ever have that thing where you have too many good ideas?  Or at least, a lot of ideas that seem good, if only you could do them all.   If only I did not have to go to my job, or see my friends ever, or take my cat to the vet, I would be able to write all these stories and make all these YouTube videos and post all these blogs.   My studies would be going so much faster, and I could write that program that would do that thing.

 

Why can’t I just be unemployed and unloved?  It would be perfect!

 

Yeah, I’m pretty sure that was Mara talking right there.

Mara the Demon

Okay, not exactly Mara, but maybe you know what I mean.  That’s the path away from reality and into a cyclical self-created drama that only exists in my head.

The thing is, time is finite.   When I leave this world, whenever that is, there will be a lot of things that I won’t have done that I would like to.  That happens to everyone.

And then I got this stupid cold, and I feel like such a slacker because I slept and read books instead of studying and writing.   I need to stop that.   That’s ridiculous.  I’m human.  And right here, right now, I’m a sick human, and that means I have to slow down and take care of myself.

I don’t know why I drive myself so hard sometimes, but I do know that it’s counterproductive.  Sometimes the reason why I don’t do things is because I’m so stymied by the feeling that I need to be creating things and doing useful things at all times.  I get so attached to that idea that it stops me in my tracks and I don’t do anything.   It’s part of my procrastination problem.  I want to do everything, and make everything, but I can’t, so I don’t even get started, and I don’t even try.     And then I feel guilty, which leads me right back to the beginning, and where I’m doing nothing but staring at Facebook for hours and feeling bad at myself.

But Facebook isn’t really the thing.  I mean, it’s distracting, and it’s designed to be distracting, but the distraction isn’t the problem.  The problem is being too much of a damn perfectionist, and expecting too much of myself and believing somehow that I’m not doing enough or being enough.   I am enough.  I am doing enough.   The words I write today are enough.  The code I figure out is enough.  The chords I learn are enough.

And just sitting here coughing and reading books is enough.

I am already who I’m supposed to be, and I don’t have to do anything more than what I do.

So, that’s my brain dump for the day.   It’s a mess, and it probably doesn’t make any sense, and it’s brilliant, and perfect, and exactly right.

Just sayin’.

Starting Over

It’s been years, really, since I did anything with this blog.  There’s a couple of reasons why I stepped away.  First and foremost, I have been working through a lot of personal shit.  I may go into this later.   For now I’ll say that I’ve remade a lot of my life, I’ve been working hard professionally, and I have been taking classes.   All of that left little to no time and even less emotional energy for this blog that I started mostly for laughs and to amuse my friends, but at some times turned into just the only place where I could express some of my opinions about my life, my surroundings, and the world I live in.

And then someone left a comment on here, a mean spirited personal attack.  But I can take that.  I usually laugh those off, in fact.  The difference with this one was that they included certain details that I have never, nor will ever disclose here on this blog.  I try to be open and honest here about the things that I want to be open and honest about, but I value my privacy.   This person went out of their way to make sure I knew that they were someone who knew me personally, and that they had really big problem with me.  Although, they did it anonymously, so I will never knew who they were/are, or why they did it.

It spooked me.   And it made me think twice about what I wanted to put out on the internet about myself, even if I was doing so under a pen name.

So for a long time, there was nothing that I wanted to write about that much, because I always thought, ‘am I opening myself up to that kind of attention again?’   The answer is, I don’t think I care so much anymore.   There are silly things that pop into my head, and dumb shit that happens to me that I want to subject the internet to, and if someone doesn’t like it or doesn’t like me, well then why are their dumb asses coming to my damn website in the first place, huh?

Seriously, though, there is a friend of mine who recently started a blog, and I feel inspired to start over.   Not really start over, because obviously there are hundreds of posts in my archives, and I’m not going to wipe all that out.  That would be stupid.    But there are a lot of things I’ve been thinking about that I want to write.   He really wants more people to view his blog, I think, and he definitely wants people to interact with it.  (I might post a link to his blog in the sidebar, but I’ll probably ask him first.)   I’ll probably send him a link to this, just so he knows that reading what he’s written in the last few days or weeks has helped me have more confidence about trying this again.  I doubt he’s ever seen this blog.  Most of my friends that I’ve made in the last four years have no idea that it exists.

And I’ll wrap this up with a music video I like.  Because I still love music, and having a soundtrack is important.    Just sayin’.

 

 

CSGL [Crazy Single Girl Life] – The Year 2012

Every year, I get on here and start hyping about how this is the year I’m going to write this blog more.  Every year, I tell myself that it’s not a resolution, because resolutions are basically a setup to fail.  But if it’s not a resolution, and I still fail anyway, what the hell is that?

The last couple of years, I’ve put myself to the task of some really hard work.  I really haven’t felt like I had a lot that I wanted to say publicly.   Also, there was a somewhat threatening comment that someone tried to leave which didn’t make it out of my moderation queue.   Those two things really made me take a step back, and think about what the heck it is I’m doing with this space.  For the most part, this has always been just where I come to spout off about random shit that’s on my mind, be it dating, friends, travel, or baseball.   I tried to be funny, and it felt good to watch the daily page views go up, and to feel like I was writing something that resonated with other folks out there.   I look at it as a good way to work out things that I might want to write more about in the future, or to vent things in a way that makes me laugh at them, because I’m really big on not taking myself too seriously.  But do I really need to be putting myself out there in the world wide web like this?  Am I really just a self-centered wanker?  The answers are yes and yes.

Look, I’ve gotten plenty of ‘hatemail’ and ‘trollers’ on this blog before, but this was different.  This was a person who wanted me to know that they knew who I really was (no pseudonym) and where I could be found.  It was shocking, a little bit.  And I’ve been working on other projects, so it was really easy to just fall back into those other things, and let Just Sayin’ idle.

No resolutions, no promises, I’m just sayin’ that 2012 is the year I get over it.   Let that person be mad.  Let that person hate.  Let that person come find me.   This is pretty much what restraining orders were made for, so I would love it if ne would show nir face.   I doubt ne will, as obviously this person’s whole threat is based on the premise of making sure I know that ne knows who I am, while not letting me know who ne is.

Anyway, so I’m back, and I’m more badass then ever.   And yes, I am single.  Roar, or something.

I’ve got a lot of exciting things planned for this year, which I am going to share with all you strangers out there and the general population, including my ex’s wife and my mother.  (Hi!  I see you there.)

In no particular order, here is a list of things I plan to blog about in 2012:

  • My actual New Year’s Resolution, which is not to blog more
  • Boot camp fitness classes (also not a resolution)
  • Bicycling
  • Planned travel to Costa Rica and hopefully back to Kauai again
  • Elections!  (oh fun, more arguing)
  • Dating!  (oh fun, more arguing)
  • Feminism! (oh fun, more arguing)
  • San Francisco Giants back in the playoffs!  (Hello, Mr. Posey.  We’ve missed you.)
  • Music – shows and albums, oh boy
  • Oakland!
  • And possibly some pictures of my cat being cute.

So sit back, relax, and enjoy while I do my best to hold up my end of the bargain.

And if you have something nasty to say, well, you go right ahead sparky, but if you make it personal, I’m going to ignore the shit out of it from here on out.

Just sayin’!

Slackerist Slacker

I am the slackerist slacker in all of blog-ville.    There used to be a time when every few hours I would think to myself, that would make for an interesting story for the blog.   That time was last year, apparently.   Seriously.    And it’s not just the blog.  I just opened my journal, and I haven’t written anything in that thing in over a year.

Of course, every time I get on here I start blah blah blahing about how I’m going to write more, and how I have a good one I’ve thought of that I’ll work on just as soon as I have time.  Of course I’ve forgotten all those good ideas.   Of course.   So here we are, quickly approaching the end of another year, and I have even less to show for it than I did last year.   Gah!

So, if you’re wondering at all, I’m over here doing my thing, working, hanging out with my friends, going to shows, and pretending to be a musician.

Oh, and my camera broke, so I can’t even take any interesting pictures, but here’s one someone took of me from Halloween.

Bitchy Frigid Ice Princess Zombie

I was an Ice Princess.   And since I went to The Phenomenauts’ Zombie Party, I was a Zombie Ice Princess.    I came up with a pretty elaborate story about how I was the Princess Winter who pined only for one Prince who wouldn’t have her.   After years of pining, she became increasingly more and more frigid and bitter until my pining was replaced with a lust for human brains.

Plus, I got to reuse that bridesmaid dress.  Win!

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been up to. . . . and as for the rest, well you know.. . .

 

Just sayin’.

How Have You Been Holding Up?

Are you alright? Did you miss me?

I’m back from my trip, and I’ll be posting all my adventures and pictures soon. But first, I have to go back to work today. Oh joy of joys. It’s not all that bad, really, but after over a week without email, I have about three to four hundred to go through this morning.

At least it’s free bagel Wednesday, though.

Cheers.