contemplation

For the more critical thinkers

I saw this quote a little while ago: Modern luxury is the ability to think clearly, sleep deeply, move slowly, and live quietly in a world designed to prevent all four.

I haven’t been thinking clearly the last few days, the news really stifles that effort and then I made the mistake (of course) of going onto a relative’s comment section trying to debunk some falsehoods only to get completely smashed and there in lies why I also didn’t sleep deeply last night. There’s no reasoning things out with somebody or groups of somebody’s whose brains have been entirely pickled by one sided news. They ask why you’re concerned that a unelected billionaire has access to your Social Security number or the purse strings of massive bill payment systems for things like Medicaid, which your father relies on. They’ll say things like, “well, Politicians have been dipping into this for years and now they’re just exposing it.” Look I’m all for exposing corruptness in any organization or government system, but doing so illegally doesn’t make it look like your intents are well meaning. We should be suspicious and skeptical of very powerful and rich people‘s motives. But I’m not gonna argue with you about it online, that gives them what they want – to see us divided and squabbling over every little thing while they destroy and obfuscate. I do believe that a large part of our population just wants to see the whole Democratic system fall apart. But what goes in place of a democratic system? Have you taken it through to is final vision because it’s what we’re creeping towards, a ruling class of oligarchs who get to make all of the decisions with no consideration for the least of us and believe me when I say we are ALL the least of them. It doesn’t matter your skin color. It doesn’t matter your party affiliation, they do not care about the average American person. If you’re uber rich and white and a man you’re probably fine but the rest of us are pretty screwed and have been sounding the alarms for quite a while. When they say they wanna take America back to when it was great, it was really great for wealthy white men in the 1850s. Today I’m cynical and a little hopeless, but it has allowed the flow of thoughts to come back. I’ve been posting a lot of stories on my business page because business ethics (I think) should be transparent with personal ethics. A business I strongly admire declined to fulfill a beverage order for SpaceX and people like that in my life really bolster my courage to speak up and speak out. I’ve gone months trying to think how to revive this writing space and I start writing things but then think I need to pour my whole life out of what’s been happening last year plus and maybe I’ll get there in little bits. But practices today involve the following: reading a lot more books. It is Black History Month (despite the White House trying to make it go away), so I’m trying to read from a lot of black authors. I’m walking and hiking distances and new ground week after week thanks to a mild winter. I’m stepping up my community involvement efforts around food, and really that is where I have power. We each of the power to affect change on the small scale with the people we live closest to and around and inviting more people to the table rather than dismissing them in a comments section on Facebook.

Movement and Creativity and Seasonal Affective Disorder

Consistency is key. When I start putting my self care routine, (namely two walks per day) to the side, things start to slide. That sciatica I had a few months of reprieve from, starts to rear its ugly symptoms again. My anxious thoughts start to overpower. I feel gloomy, lonely, and hopeless. I’ve reached that part of the year where this rut happens, it’s seasonal depression. I naively thought since it’s been warmer and I’ve been outside more that it wouldn’t hit but no amount of outdoor time can fix it when there’s no UV light and thus no vitamin D to derive from the sun.

I opened the store timing-wise to counteract the feelings of isolation that also naturally happen come winter. We’re all just inside and prone to hibernation mode. Well, we have to eat, so come on by and get some food and conversation to break up the daily monotony, it’s good for all of us! It’s the week of Christmas so I’m baking and making neighbor treats. Having a sourdough crisis in that I can’t seem to get a good rise, so loaf after loaf is a new experiment and little tweaks here and there. If you’ve received a flatish loaf from me, it’s still good, just pop it in the toaster for a bit! Or make it into a stuffing or croutons, we’ve done all of the above with much delight.

This is all to say, this time of year is hard, but also joy filled. Lonely and quiet but also inviting and eye opening. Looking for ways to express gratitude daily. Noticing how I crave color this time of year when all is brown and flat, so when I look up and get a beautiful sunrise or sunset it feels like a gift just for me. Laughing with people but also crying about the pain of it all. We will come to know the vastness of our emotions but will not be slaves to them. I was made by a powerful Creator, and I am a powerful creation. It is within all of us. What we choose to do with is up to us.

Look what a three mile hike outside of town can do to get my writing flowing again. Thanks for reading!

South Star

It’s been 12 years since my mom breathed her last earthly breath. Today felt “off” in a lot of ways and when I finally recognized why I went a lot easier on myself and let my family know too. You can reset the day however many times you need and at any given moment. I’m also going to sleep before 10 on account of the time change so tomorrow me can be ready for the earlier sunrise.

It feels okay to write about what this south star concept means to me now that my dad is in the depths of his dementia and will never read or comprehend these words. This is in no disrespect to either of them I want to make that clear, but theirs was a marriage with a lot of turmoil. It was like two different marriages under one roof. My dad lived in a lot of darkness and depression for the decade after she died and before he got sick. She was the love of his life. Since he got dementia, he still thinks she’s alive, and it really works out better this way for all of us. My mom on the other hand wanted out. She voiced it regularly the last 5 years of her life. She felt stuck and tired and run down from holding up the marriage on her own due to the family disease of alcoholism. My dads raging alcoholism let him live in a fantasy world where everything was perfect, while she lived much of her life in misery – overworking to pay the always late bills, keeping the household afloat, martyring herself to the cause until it literally killed her.

I’ve forgiven them both in so many ways. And the biggest one is using their example as my south star. Whenever there is something out of harmony or reminiscent of my childhood growing up in an alcoholic home I don’t have to go resolve it using that same old beaten path. I can chart a new one and try something different. I can use any number tools that 12 step work has given me. I always have options and people to support me. I don’t have to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results (that’s the definition of insanity).

Don’t like a yelling house? Don’t yell and instead take your anger outside into nature. I screamed at the sky today and my throat still hurts. Don’t like passive aggressive behavior? Stand up to it and call it out for what it is in the moment. Ask for clarification and demand rigorous honesty. Be transparent with your kids about serious topics like money, sex, and addictions. Tell them where you’ve struggled and why. I didn’t get a North Star growing up but that doesn’t mean the next generation has to repeat the same traumas I experienced.

Gosh I miss my mom with such a huge part of my heart, but I wouldn’t have learned nearly all that I have in her absence. Her death pushed me to seek out healthy relationships with so many wonderful lifelong women friends and mentors that I know I wouldn’t have dared seeking out had she not died. I wouldn’t have the life I have today if she was still here, resentful and bitter. She loved a lot of things in her life earth-side, us kids above all else, being a grandma even if only for a short while, God, and even my dad despite his addiction. I don’t know how much she loved herself though, and that is another south star. Loving myself means I have love to offer others without reservation or judgement. She was a good example in modeling a Christ like love and for that I am grateful. Grief can me mixed and messy and this is what that powerful loss means to me 12 years later

Memory Inventory

I have this huge modern age aversion to organizing my photos. I’ll do it, but my back has to up against the wall, whether pictures are busting out of their development envelopes like in the good old days of film, or in this case, my iCloud is full and I need to backup or pay for larger storage. I loathe this task. The last time I did it was in 2018 if that is any indication of my aversion. I have 8000 photos from the last 5 years that need (and indeed have) a home to land in that is not cloud based.

This task brings up all kinds of existential questions for me. What if I put these pictures on my external hard drive and no one ever looks at them, again? I went through the majority of my parent’s photo albums when we were clearing out their house in 2021 and honestly, most of the albums ended up in the trash. My dad took a lot of photos on long work trips of the process of putting up electrical lines across the western U.S. After looking at so many, you get the idea of what was involved and don’t need to sift through the whole box to discover any more. It was a core memory for him though and when we drove across Colorado and moved him to Utah, he was actively reminiscing about that process and I had no doubt that even given his decreased mental state, he did play a part in electrifying that portion of I-70. Obviously it held meaning for him, but what of our future generations will a box full of the same photos of strangers and heavy equipment mean to anyone else? Maybe being a nomad for so long made me less sentimental about holding onto things. Clearing out their house did the same for me. But life captured on a phone is somehow different in my brain.

So now I’m cataloguing our photos of the long traveling journey and some of the time before that up until present day, I’m not going to make physical albums or hang photos everywhere like I have done in the past. They were memories made and reminders of fun times had, but I documented the journey right here in this blog and on social media, I got what I needed out of it, it’s time to free up the space on my phone to make space for new moments that call for documentation. For someone like me who needs those visual cues of what I was doing in September of 2020 for example, removing pictures from my phone feels like I’m erasing my memory. Same goes for emails and texts but those have to be archived or deleted as well. For someone whose family member has dementia this feels very sensitive and tender and if I put that memory somewhere else, will I ever go to access it again? What if I forget?

I was talking about this whole photo conundrum with a neighbor a few months ago, how when we were growing up our parents took photos 12 or 24 at a time over a span of several months or a year. They were documenting the really special moments or highlights of a trip. They’d come home and get the film developed and put the pictures in an album or a box, this didn’t even happen all the time. Sometimes the film never even made it to the developer. My family didn’t have videos or need to be archivists to document family life. Once a year portrait studios were more my mom’s jam. In my own little family Natalie was born on the end of the film era, so she has several albums I put together when I was more diligent and less over documenting of her early years. Camden came in 2010, well into the digital age, and he has maybe one or two physical albums to take into adulthood, the rest of his early years are on CDs that where can you even go to look at anymore, or on Facebook which will that even be relevant to look at in his future. It’s so strange how quickly everything changed once we all had cellphones and the ability to take millions of photos and videos of every little thing.

80’s me with mom and sis

I guess in summary I’m realizing I need to treat my unused photos a little more blasé and with a little more detachment. They are not the be-all-end-all part of an experience, like if I didn’t take the picture did it even happen? Yes, I get enjoyment out of the process of documenting, but if the archival process is going to be such and arduous chore, maybe I can edit a little more along the way and not go five more years ignoring, dancing around, and subverting this notice…

I got lost in the weeds

It’s really been almost two months since my last writing. We’ve all been outside a whole lot (hallelujah!). I’ve been business planning, stumbling, tripping, getting stuck in fear and perfectionism, but I’m aware of that now and ready to step into action again.

I opened my planning notebook and the last day I took any business actions was the end of April. Then I allowed myself to get distracted by all the things; chickens, gardening, my dad’s things, my kid’s things. And on and on. It’s a destructive pattern that I can’t catch myself doing until I pause and recalibrate. Yesterday I plucked a box full of weeds from all over the yard. Last year when we got here there was little weeding to do – it was mostly dry and desolate, making the weeds very manageable and visible. The weeds I’m going after are brambly, all over the place, and once dry will become prickly goat heads. Bike tire killers, annoying to both people and dog feet everywhere. So I’m getting at them while they’re easy to pluck and soft enough to snag bare handed. But while I’m hunting I’m also thinking, (probably too much). About the state of our world, about the precariousness of starting a new business, about borrowing money for that business, about paperwork I still need to do for my dad’s needs, about driving all over the county for the next six weeks for Camden’s baseball, about Natalie starting some jobs this summer and how to shuffle cars for it all to work, about doctor and dentist appointments needing to be researched and scheduled. Like I said, all. the. things.

I got to the weeds for a few minutes this morning again but then had to stop. This goal of eradicating this specific weed in this moment is really keeping me from the work I need to do in pursuit of MY goals. Yes, it’s important, but I need not let it consume large swaths of my day. I need not exhaust my body first thing and then have nothing left in the tank for writing or planning later.

I’ve never been much for the write and schedule block in a planner, but maybe I need to change my mind on this. The things I put in the calendar rarely coincide with my own needs or goals. I have large chunks of day that I largely mismanage in service to the house or someone else. Do all mothers do this? Do all women do this? I thought I was more aware than I am.

The other thing that keeps coming up for my is the cynic who says that all of this effort is pointless so why even try. There are such huge societal issues playing out before our very eyes. We as a country are so sick and obsessed with weapons, more concerned with party over principle, completely numb to the horrors we hear of every single day. It’s exhausting to just be alive. What difference can a little store in the middle of nowhere (somewhere?) make? I could really use some encouragement in this area. The isolation of these thoughts keeps me stuck too. I feel powerless. So tell me reader, what you do to keep moving forward when we are the ones we have been waiting for.