its a thought

Do you know what would be an EXCELLENT PLAN?

Going out and cleaning off my car now, so I don’t have to do it in the morning in my work clothes.  

That would be an EXCELLENT thing to do. 

Been thinking it all day.  Haven’t done it yet.  Probably won’t do it.

But it remains a very valid plan.  

6 inches of snow and standing in road slush.  

It will be FUN.  

On the other hand - we are supposed to have a freezing drizzle tonight.  And that shit will still need to be scraped off tomorrow.  

This place is dying, isn’t it?

I was just searching for the user name of a particular person I wanted to message by scrolling through my follows. 

Wow.  So many names that I haven’t heard from in years that were so integral to my daily scroll 6 years ago.  In fact probably 80% of my follows haven’t updated in a year or more.  Many in 4 or more years. 

Every once in awhile I came across someone who had passed away and felt the pang of loss.  

But the loss that bothers me the most is the people who have left the site and I no longer know where they are or what they are doing. 

I don’t want it all to die.  I want those golden days of 8 years ago to be real in the now.  

How odd that I would call it golden days, when my personal life was a train slowly gaining momentum into chaos then.  But online, there was this world of connection in tumblr.  It mattered so much to me.  In fact it was the thing that sustained me in the absolute worst times of my life. 

But now it’s dying.  Probably most of the people that were there for me then are gone.  And several of them I really really want to know how they are, what they are doing.  

On the other hand, and no doubt deeply late to the party, I recently discovered a group of fanfic lovers of tumblr, who it turns out are super fun.  It’s a different dynamic of course.  

The original community I belonged to was here to just share life and talk to each other.  Early days of people I followed were all people who came over from twitter’s FavStar community.  Damn that was fun.  Twitter is a sewage waste dump now, but originally it was just people, often making SUPER funny tweets.  It was a bit of a stupid game to try and get your funny tweet recognized, but it was fun.  And creative.  I was never particularly good at it, but I enjoyed it.

I miss those halcyon days.  I feel like most of the good things online are dying or already dead.  To me that is the apocalypse.  When nothing really wonderful is left online.   The complete death of my community on tumblr will be a death knoll to my online enjoyment.  

I hope we last longer than their efforts to eradicate us. 

DAMMIT DAMMIT DAMMIT

I planned to spend the entire weekend working from home on a project that I haven’t been able to really dig into at work because we were short staffed.  It’s basically just sifting through data in a spreadsheet and setting it up properly so it can be uploaded into our new system. 

I got all the easy broad strokes done and started to look at each line.  I was about 50 rows done out of 3300 when I realized I can’t pull up the info I need to reference unless I am at work.  The worst part is that it’s the name of a passenger.  If I didn’t need to think of it, I could.  It’s in my brain somewhere. 

Ironically, this new system we are going to would let me get on from home, but the current one does not. 

I’m annoyed at a deep level about this development. 

I’m not going in.  I’m just going to mark it up with all the things I will have to go back to when I’m at work.  In other words, I’m going to have touch all this stuff again.  

I’m deeply frustrated.  

our-ever-thine:

My friend Ruth is this person.  And is constantly disappointed by her friends and family.  Including me.  

(via lance-on-deck)

Weekends are useless to me

I mean - I guess it’s a rest.  So that’s nice. 

But they turn into black holes of nothingness.  I do nothing and end up feeling fairly shitty about it. 

I keep struggling against this problem and it’s just not getting any better.  Which is annoying at minimum and scary at worst.  At some level it feels like the weekends are the open door back to the bad days that led to homelessness. 

Essentially it amounts to - if any action in my life is not part of a habitual routine, it’s chances of getting done plummet.  Which means, that I’m not actually better, I’ve just built a better disguise for the depression.  

All of this self flagellation is the result of me not going into work as I intended today.  It’s my day off but both my co-workers are off next week and were off the last part of last week.  The back up was also off unexpectedly.  And so it all falls on me.  Since it’s a slow time, it’s not terrible, BUT not going in on the weekend means that I will have 3 days worth of paperwork on my desk.  And there is stuff not finished from Friday because I was going to do it when I came in on the weekend. 

So.  Now I’m going to be facing a bear tomorrow.  Cross your fingers that back up is able to come in.  Because otherwise, I’m gonna be wading through mountains of paper alone. With no one to blame but me.  Because I should have gone in today.  

Sigh. I will not drown in the paper.

Originally posted by struruso

HOLY Toasters, Batman!

My toaster broke.  Everything in my life seems to be breaking but that’s a different gripe.   Anyway, no big deal.  Toasters are like $20 bucks.  Less if you are willing to face Walmart, but I’m not. 

But did you KNOW that you KitchenAid is raping the public with a $389 toaster?!  And at least 81 people bought it. 

Do these people know you can buy a $20 toaster?  Probably a $10 toaster if you can face Walmart?  

I LOVE that they call it “automatic”?  Uhm.  What?  What could it possibly do that is more automatic than the $20 version?  AND, It’s got those obviously NON electronic sticks for adjusting doneness,   Is it possible they are charging more for being retro/old school cool?  

Of course they did name the brushed chrome Sugar Pearl, that’s apparently worth $.  

People.  Toast is Toast.  You either like a toaster oven or a regular toaster toast.  I admit there is a difference in texture to those two methods.  But if you are doing regular toaster - at that point it’s just hot wires making brown bread. 

Uhm.  Why does Tumblr think a hilarious picture of a dog’s butt and tail is porn?

The dog’s butt looked like Jesus.  It was FUNNY.   Not porny.

I feel like a eradicate porn bot doesn’t recognize porn.  

I’m probably late to this complaint party, aren’t I?

I go away for a few weeks and it all gets weirder. 

Hi!  I’m back.

My social media hiatus was only minorly successful.  

I kept off Tumblr which is my most time consuming media and twitter which is my most anxiety inducing one. 

But I did spend time on Reddit.  And much more time because you know I was on here. 

So, I don’t think I got anything out of it.  

I’m not sure it meant anything. 

But it happened. 

Tomorrow begins my experimental blackout of endless scrolling media.

Which includes Tumblr. 

I don’t know if I will last beyond noon.  Or even 10am. 

But my “plan” is to do all of December. 

We shall see. 

I’m an addict. 

Thursday. Right?!

I wish I understood my brain. Today I was walking in a weird land of brain grenades and good mood.  I have no explanations.  I’ve not experienced this before.  

I will say brain grenades are easier to manage when my mood is a bit sunnier.  The “I hate me moments” are quelled with easy logic.  Usually when I try to redirect my brain away from some horrible thought it’s with the feeling that the horrible thought is probably right and I’m just following the procedure because that’s how I keep sane.  

Today, I was able to recognize their fallacy and quell them without the lingering feeling that the grenade ideas have validity. 

So WHY?  What was happening in my brain?  Occasionally I have days where my brain opens up and I feel good I don’t have brain grenades.  I don’t recall having a mixed climate in my brain before.  

In any case, I’m glad to report that I’ve had two days of positive emotional life.  So much so my teammate commented on it.  Mind you, I’m normally such a grouch that just the slightest change toward sympathy instead of exasperation shows.  

I felt kind of bad about having my good mood commented on because my other teammate is clearly in a GIANT struggle with her brain.  She spent a good part of today crying.  She lost her SO of 30 years a couple of months ago.  She already struggled with physical and mental issues.  And she takes medications that make her more than a bit of a trial to work with.  But I do sympathize with her.  She is trying.  So hard.  

Sometimes just the daily steps to get dressed and drive to work represent an accomplishment of gargantuan proportion.  And she’s been in that place for months now.  But she is coming in now very regularly. 

My first teammate has never had depression.  She doesn’t have a clue how large the struggle is for the normal things normal people do.  She is frustrated.  Which is of course the normal response to dealing with anyone with depression.  Our symptoms don’t illicit sympathy, just exasperation.  

I wish I knew how to help her.  It seems like I should be able to, being so familiar with the struggle.  But we aren’t that kind of friends.  Maybe an occasion will occur that I can show how much I get the effort she is making.  

Maybe I will have that opportunity this Sunday when we will be working together on the month close. 

On the other hand, K, who is the one who was wondering got into me with the positives, also commented that the new HR director is probably scared of me.  See, here’s the thing.  I’m a grouch but I also have a dry sense of humor.  He was nosing into the Xmas decoration boxes that hadn’t been opened.  I told him in a stern mother voice that unless the box had his name on it, it wasn’t any of his business and he should go sit down.  I didn’t mean anything serious by it.   I found it amusing, since he’s 20 years younger than me, and he was acting a bit like a young kid at Xmas.  He stopped poking.  Which was honestly not my intention.  I was intending to be fun.  When I’m in a deeply grouchy mood I ignore people until they poke me so hard that I’m outright unmistakably mean.  

Mostly I maintain a quiet middle ground.  With a bias toward grouch.  I foster my grouchy side toward the various people who want to use our office as a waiting room for HR or the Shuttle Manager and Trainer.  They have to walk through our office to get there.  Let me say that if you let them, drivers will basically homestead in our office.  Any encouragement of friendliness or responding to chattiness and they will pull up a metaphorical rocker and suck the time out of your life while tasks sit on your desk waiting for your attention.  I’m SERIOUS about avoiding any pleasantries.  I told the owner of the company and two managers that they have offices of their own and they should probably have the conversation they were holding in our office in one of their own. 

K is naturally friendly and it is A MISTAKE with the potential homesteaders.  Don’t make eye contact.  Don’t encourage them to think you are the person who can help them.  Make it clear that you are NOT the secretary for these people. 

I don’t mind helping them with a quick question, it’s the aftermath of pulling up a rocker on the porch that drives me bananas.  So I just don’t give even the slightest sign that they would be welcome to homestead in our office.  Because if you do, they will. 

I’m considering take a social media break.

Maybe for the whole month of December.  

I just sucks up my time.  And when I’m on it I find myself getting more and more anxious about the world.  And more caught in the stillness. 

But.  I’m not actually sure I’m strong enough to do it.  I’m pretty deeply addicted to the internet.  I’ve mostly ditched twitter and it’s been fairly easy.  But I just filled up that time with Reddit which is a shit show of it’s own.  

I’m not even sure that the internet is really the problem and that cutting it out will help.  I might just be deflecting onto it.  It’s an easy scapegoat. 

Has anyone take a full break from the internet or at least from the endless scrolling apps and sites?  

Thanksgiving

There is a strange sense that I don’t matter anymore.  Not like anyone didn’t welcome me.  EVERYONE did. 

But I walked into a foyer of young ones, Millennials, I suppose.  I recognized their features but I didn’t REALLY know who was who.  But they were all full grown adults - who are these people???? 

They are the children of my generation of cousins.  How are they they 30 year old adults?  So good and open and generous to middle to old woman who they recognize but who barely recognizes them.  They welcomed me with humor and love.  They recognized me, even if I didn’t recognize them.  I have to give their parents full credit for their warm welcome of a bewildered cousin.  I was so glad to see my Aunt when she bustled through the crowd of young’uns to welcome me.  

Most of the young’uns were 2nd or maybe that’s third cousins to me?  But one of them was my nephew who blended in and was in his natural habitat.  He, like me. was an orphan for the Holiday but unlike me, he immediately was able to gab with his cousins and had no issue feeling at home. 

When I was driving home I realized what was wrong.  My generation had been supplanted.  We were no longer the energy of the get together.  We weren’t the ones who connected and understood and made the laughter.  It was now a new generation that did that.  I thought of myself in the wrong context.  

I was no longer part of the energy that made the table a delight.  I was part of the older generation that enjoyed the banter.  It’s odd.  But also rather wonderful. 

They all get all along.  The Young Ones. Talking and Joking a mile a minute.  They sound NEARLY identical in tone and voice.  Most people might have a hard time distinguishing them over the phone.  And that includes my nephew who is 2 degrees from the genetic line of the other Millennials at the table.  But they all loved talking and their voices were so similar in tone and timber.  I think we under estimate how much that is an inherited trait.  

It was a good night.  My cousin who just 6 weeks ago was on his LITERAL death bed was sitting at the table with us.  He walked in with a walker and just 3 weeks ago couldn’t walk,  So miracles all around.  

One of my young cousins announced his engagement, a son of my cousin who is the miracle.  I couldn’t help feeling like it was such good timing.  It’s nice to have an event to target his recovery to.  

It was a good evening.  I didn’t always feel comfortable.  But it made me aware of life being good and real.  Even when it’s mildly awkward.  

I was glad I went.  I spent the 2 hours before I went trying to come up with reasons not to go.  I’m glad my stillness didn’t win.  Perhaps the Lexapro is good.