This was a really nice break from the battery powered hamster wheel that is my life. Now that my house is clean, my boxes are all unpacked and my pictures are on the walls, I’m feeling very quiet and sad. I like my kids. I like my house. I want more time to enjoy life. I wish I could keep driving them to school and sometimes even picking them up. I want to travel and drink wine and make art and meet people and meditate and experience joy. I know that I don’t need to do all those other things in order to do the last one, that joy comes to me in many forms. But my life is hard right now, emotionally, logistically. And this week has been a nice rest from the crazy train. I don’t know if I have the strength to get back on.
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Gods bless the restorative powers of a Netflix binge, a nap, a dog to walk and a job that I really do love. I’m ready to hop back on the wheel!
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I have to decide how much my kids need direction, support and ultimatums regarding their use of their phones and how much I need to adapt to raising digital natives. I’m pretty sure I have things to teach them about achieving focus, working efficiently and minimizing distractions. I’m just not entirely sure how to teach these things in a credible way. They are so sure they don’t need direction, they are very skeptical of any advice that involves using phones less. Like I’m just making shit up so that I can take away their iphones! How to prove that I have their best interests and optimal personal development at heart?!?!
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I’m in a really toxic mood and I don’t know what to do about it. I don’t know if it is hormones, fatigue, post-vacation malaise or a sign of something more sustainably dissatisfying about my life. I’m feeling really invisible. I’m missing my context. These new surroundings are starting to lose their polish. No longer is everything new and different. Which is significantly less terrifying. For which I am grateful. But things are also not yet familiar. I miss having real friends. Being a single parent with a slacking ex is very disappointing. It makes me tired and stressed, it makes me sad about the lack of co-parent, it makes me feel unappreciated for all the things I do around the house for two teenagers who are surly and self-centered and don’t want to talk to me. (All of which is developmentally appropriate and in no way the unique characteristics of their personalities.) I feel compelled to defend them even as they hurt my feelings and frustrate me. I need to eat better - there’s way too much sugar in my diet, I definitely need to meditate more. I would benefit from some regular exercise. And probably therapy. Fantastic, my frontal lobe has just problem-solved its way out of this slump. Huzzah. Someone needs to write my frontal lobe a memo and let it know that it isn’t in charge of getting us out of this mess.
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It just occurred to me that something that makes me feel unsettled about my performance at work is that there are no grades. How do I know how I’m doing if I don’t get graded?!?! Okay, now that I’ve figured that out, I can untangle the crazy that sentiment is and remind myself of all those years I had jobs with no grades and did quite well thank you very much.
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This is a story about how I internalized the meaning of the stage of grief called Denial. I was talking to a friend today, as I am wont to do when feeling unsteady. It was a good conversation with a friend who listens to me complain about and explore the nuances of my life without making the whole conversation feel morose. And then we talk about her life and we tie things together between our common experiences. I was explaining to her that I was having a strong “Is this really my effing life?!?” feeling lately and she named it as denial. I have to say I’ve always been puzzled by this stage. How can one be in denial of something they are grieving? No I don’t have a terminal illness? No my loved one did not get hit by a bus? No I’m not going to jail? But the truth is that it isn’t that this stage is about stating that a thing is not happening, rather it is about the happening of this event not resonating with the rest of one’s expectations and experiences. It tracks, for me, more as disconnect or dissociation but denial is the term it was given by good old Kubler-Ross. It finally makes sense to me.
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