The Brilliance of Resilience

Just now something happened that flipped the switch of the day. As in, just this second. The blogger window was already open to talk about how conflicted I feel lately. It's as if every turn fuels the never-balanced and never-ending scale of pros and cons - the internal dialog of what is important and what is worthy of my drive and passion. It can propel you into oblivion with the constant running of how it could be better or how you need to improve upon what isn't enough in life - the money, the geography, the accolades, the benefits... Then I heard that W died this weekend. W died after retirement. Not enough retirement. W was feisty, strong-willed, argumentative at times, passionate, determined, and old-fashioned. She fought and won. She fought and lost. She got on my fucking nerves from time-to-time and made my job really hard. W was a nice person that I didn't like to work with sometimes. W deserved more time. When W died I was a still in limbo about a po...

Last Monday I had the six or seventh car accident that I did not cause (there have been so many that I have lost track). This is the third accident with the car that I purchased in 2015. I have had to prove my piece of the accident more than I feel that I should have, but I think that the work and transparency is paying off. When I flung open the door and faced a girl ten years younger than me that was being impatient at the stop sign, backed up to go around and didn't see me, I faced myself. "...'cause I was once like you, so arrogant and brave. Impetuous and rude." I joked with Mike when I got this car that I should call it Kismet, but I never actually named it as I had with all of my other vehicles. Maybe I cursed it with the name Kismet or maybe I am cursed with Kismet. I often joke with people that I am paying a Karmic penance for being a real asshole in a previous life. The reality is, I am probably paying a bit of a Karmic penance for being a real asshole ...

I didn't know that I was finally divorced on February 24. I did know that I was in New York City for the first time and I was super excited to overload all of my senses simultaneously (I do not know if I was prepared for the overload of my sense of smell in every conceivable way, just saying). My weight loss "plan" has included a lot of urban hiking in many cities and I am very lucky to be in a situation where I can take a day to drive to a new city or town, dump the car and figure out the rest on foot (and lose weight in the process). New York seemed to be the culmination of that kind of tourism, so stepping off the train and onto West 34th Street was much like how first-time New York experiences are depicted. I sent many photos to my Mother and she asked me at one point, "Is it really like it looks in these photos?" I could confirm that wholeheartedly. Many things that I saw were those things that have been shown to me in film, television and I hav...

As a gesture of interest in people bringing their, "whole selves," to work, my company has revamped their employee spotlight articles and replaced them with questions that are much less interview-ish and much more conversational. The articles always highlight a single word that encompasses themselves and the work that they do, and it always leads with, "My work is a story of..." Because I have spent the last two years being really self-centered, I thought immediately what my word would be and if I wanted to volunteer to talk about my work and my personal life through the lens of seemingly informal atmosphere. I definitely do want to do that (see above: self-centered), but not on that platform. When someone struggles with the things that I have struggled against since forever, people in a professional "career," setting often use those stories, those emotions and those experiences as fodder for labeling in whatever terms would suit propelling their own car...

I used to really love Christmas. I collected a ridiculous amount of Christmas decorations, especially the vintage plastic, kitschy stuff, and I hung it up and had, "Christmas in July," parties and loved giving gifts and making ham or whatever. And it seemed like the world was bright. Then, I had the worst Christmas I've ever had when my exhusband and I began the slow descent into the end of our marriage the November before the Christmas season of 2014. That Christmas Day my mother had too many Christmas-themed drinks and was so hungover she couldn't get out of bed. We took our laundry to my parents house and spent the day in opposite chairs watching things like, "The Price is Right," at an ear-splitting decibel level with my deaf father, eating a shitty meal and opening gift cards to each other and from each other. When there are no kids to celebrate, Christmas becomes oddly unimportant and when you have the beginning of no marriage, it seems even ...

When I was living with Betty, my Grandmother, every weekend and summer of my childhood, I would always read through a file folder of typed Country Music song lyrics. There were notes on them where she had corrected the typist's misheard lyrics and misspellings. Betty should probably be around to correct this blog post. I am sure she is ready to correct me from her cloud. When she died, I inherited her records. The cool thing is is that some of them are starred with the songs that she especially liked. They were rarely the singles. Betty was a hipster. Mike said to me the other day that he felt like he came out of the closet as a Country-Music lover when he met me because I was a person that appreciated it, too, and would actively talk about it and go to shows in a totally non-hokey and non-ironic way. We talked about this a lot, because both of us felt that when we stood on the proverbial hilltop and said that we were into Country Music in a way that was more than liking th...

One of the support groups that I belong to allows for people to just kind of post free-form comments  that are highlight moderated by the people that have volunteered to keep the group a safe space. I appreciate that there is freedoms to express (and some people do...too often and with reckless abandon...let's be honest), but to be safe with each other and not cast the shadow of judgement. I mean...cast all you want, I guess. We all do. But don't go castin' it in this space. Someone wrote today, "This isn't a political discussion, but do you feel like this election is triggering you?" I thought that that was a very interesting thing to think about. That aside from the political beliefs that you hold, the candidates, the coverage, the ads, the rhetoric...is it triggering? Only women responded about being sexual abuse survivors, or having domineering and abusive fathers with narcissistic behavioral patterns. They responded with how they cope and how they feel....