Archives for August 2020

Yesterday sucked. Seeing the news, late in the evening, that Chadwick Boseman had died at just 43 was a shock.

As I read the memories from his friends and colleagues, I know my sadness is just a fraction of theirs. I know there was no personal connection to the man on the screen. But I still grieve.

Immediately after learning he had been fighting cancer for 4 years I was shocked. How could we not know? Then, rationally, I understand that it was not our place to know. I can’t imagine how hard he fought. How he continued to do movies and press and chemo. How he spoke about purpose and legacies and married his wife – all knowing that he could die.

What a blessing that he was not also overwhelmed with the well-intentioned busybodies that would have wondered what treatment he was on, if he’d tried herbal medicine, what doctor he was seeing, if he was still vegetarian, what stage the cancer had reached, why he didn’t try this therapy or that regime. Thank God he was spared the endless death watch of the media, the people who reached out for their own clout or virtue signaling instead of true friendship and concern.

Actors give so much of themselves on the screen, the best ones make us feel like friends. We become invested in their stories and their lives. But that doesn’t exclude them from experiencing privacy, especially about their most difficult struggles.

The real question is, what would you have done if you’d known sooner? How can you bring that behavior into your life right now? Because if you knew your hero would die, decades soon than expected, would you have written a letter? Thanked him on social media?

If so, do that now. It may be too late for Chadwick to hear how much he meant to all of us, but it’s not too late for those still here.

When I was accepted at University and sent in my intention to attend it began a barrage of mail. Every few days I was getting something in the mail (thrilling for a 17 yo) with details on orientation, roommates, the RULES, housing request, all of it.

But there was one thing that the University failed to send me: the directions for my school email account. It wasn’t until I arrived on campus and the RA showed me how to retrieve it that I found dozens more messages, these announcing rule changes and opportunities which I’d missed out on.

Stupidity is delivering information to someone without telling them how to access it. When I asked the dean why I had not gotten login instructions along with the forest of mail sent to my home the answer was disconcerting: we emailed it to you.

Meaning, to my new email address. Which I didn’t know existed.

Companies today are no less idiotic.

“Here’s the login for your online account using a username you have never chosen nor has been assigned. Super important info in there!” Thanks, car insurance company. Glad to know I can’t access any of it.

“We must have the account number (that we never assigned you and appears in none of our communication) otherwise we can’t support you in this account which we clearly have on our screens.” Thanks for nothing, internet provider from hell.

The horrible customer “service” leads to an entire community who think they’re bad at “adulting” simply because they don’t want to deal with idiots.

It’s been quiet around here, at least when it comes to writing, but I have posted a few essays on Facebook. Mostly, it feels like chaos all the time.

My new home is maybe 25% unpacked, with boxes stacked up in the garage. Next week the storage towers I found for the garage arrive and assembling and filling those will be top priority.

I’ve found that I’m missing a lot of storage so I bought the components to build my office bookshelf – but first I need to prime and paint the wall and remove the baseboards.

I have a TV bench for the television in a box, which is simply too heavy to navigate up the stairs on my own right now. So it sits in the garage.

I bought a metal shelf for the laundry room, it hasn’t been put up.

I bought some wood also for shelves in the laundry room. It hasn’t been cut to size.

My bedroom is 50% painted and I keep finding small areas that need touching up. All of the doors on the first floor are hideous and need to be primed and painted but I’ve done none of it.

Right now everything feels chaotic and stressful so I’m going back to the basic routines that keep me sane. Today that means washing all the dishes, taking out the trash and washing walls that need paint. Little by little it will get done.

Today I made the (possibly foolish) promise that the revamped course for my new training site would be done in 2 weeks.

*gulp*

That means it’s time to buckle down and get shit done (my unofficial company slogan) so that I can meet that promise.

But as soon as I commit to spending 2 hours mapping out what needs to be done, distractions show up.

First my dogs, insisting they need to go outside again to sniff and bark and investigate the yard. Since my privacy fence is not up 100% I can’t just put them outside and ignore them. So I tie Wilson to the rope line and do my best to move things in/out of the garage as needed while the dogs explore. Then I take out the trash. And the recycling.

Finally we’re back inside. It’s all good until I need a drink. Going into the kitchen these days is a hazard. I have ONE more box of kitchen “stuff” to unpack so some shelves are packed, others are organized, but there’s still lots of stuff on the counters. I want to do the dishes up, organize the Tupperware cabinet, prep some potatoes and zucchini for dinner.

I grab a bottle of water and go back to the office.

I’m working on outlining the course as it’ll look in its new format. Playing around with the format of dummy copy, I decide I’ll need some new graphics.

Off I go to canva, playing with the backgrounds and font choices, colors, gradients…. I created the graphics I needed in record time and then closed out the tab before I could get further distracted.

But the #1 sign that I’m distracted is that I feel the tug to go on Facebook, even when I have no desire to read what people are doing and posting about. Instead of staying on the page and on track with what I need to get done, I welcome a change of pace. A distraction that doesn’t judge me for not being done with this project.

Every time I notice that urge creep in I have to fight it. Sometimes I fight it by doing another task to give my brain a break. I have plenty of things to do around here. But more often than not, I need to push through and finish what I started. After all, I’m on a deadline.

So many thing influence what we pay for variable services, like insurance. In the US, where car insurance is mandatory, you can pay more or less based on your age, gender, location, driving distance per year, type of car, age of car, driving record and marital status.

And I’m fine with all of those, except the final one.

You cannot accurately predict someone’s risk based on if they are married. Simply cannot.

The outdated and archaic belief that married people are happier, more stable, and drive safer because they have someone to go home to? Bullshit.

I am less likely to argue with someone in the car, less likely to drive off angry, less likely to spend the evening drinking at a bar before going home, and less likely to let some idiot drive my car and wreck it.

There are a lot of jokes about the “single tax” such as my friends who pay for online dating sites, a monthly reminder of how much it costs to be alone, and tax benefits only available for married couples.

Don’t even get me started on every story of a person who died young whose mother cries saying, “she never got to get married and be happy” as if those two are guaranteed to go together. It’s almost as annoying as “once they have kids they’ll have a real family.” Fuck all the way off please.

But I don’t really care if family meals aren’t conducive for a single person or it costs more (per person) to travel and rent a hotel room. I do care that I am charged 10% more, every year, for car insurance because I’m not a Mrs.

At the start of this year I began a new journal, thinking I would definitely fill it up by mid-year. Instead I’m maybe 40 pages in and wondering why I don’t make it a consistent habit.

I mean, I would love to look back on the clusterfuck of 2020 and read, in my own handwriting, what I was doing and thinking. There’s something a bit romantic about hand written stuff, tell me you wouldn’t rather have a personalized birthday card rather than an e-card.

But aside from the fact I haven’t had to hand write long form consistently since high school, and we’re not talking about how long ago that was, I think I’m just out of habit.

When I sit down to journal my mind immediately goes to all the things I am grateful that I accomplished (like today: laundry, grocery shopping, new license plate on the truck) and those things I have to write down so I don’t forget to do them (renew my passport, fold the laundry, give the dogs a bath).

So I get all my thoughts out on those things instead of my thoughts on life. How I feel, what’s frustrating me, what brings me joy, what I anticipate next in my life… you know, the good stuff.

It’s not that the mundane stuff is unimportant, but in a world where we have The Price is Right does anyone really need to know that it was $3 for a can of pineapple so I just bought pineapple juice instead?

As I work on my new house it’s always a balance between the major and the mundane. For example:

• I bought LED lightbulbs so I can actually see the rooms I’m renovating. Boring!
• I need to measure the first floor square footage so I can shop around for hardwood flooring. Boring!
• I’m testing paint colors for the exterior (which needs a lot of work). Major project.
• I’ve started to work on the landscape plan, cutting back some bushes and planning the fencing. Major project!

Each of those things I can write about, I just need to get out my pens and journal and do it!