Wednesday, July 31, 2019
Tuesday, August 20, 2019
Thursday, September 26, 2019
Friday, October 4, 2019
and a dozen others
Today I love my life for naps/sleep.
I rarely want to go to sleep at night. There are just usually more interesting things to do. Books to read, shows to watch, Instagram feeds to scroll. But I find myself enjoying more and more the slow drifting in and out of long afternoon naps, or weekend mornings when I can sleep in.
I’m enjoying the simple possibility of naps. My therapist once gave me permission to sleep if I need to, and I think that absolution is what makes the naps so enjoyable. I don’t need to be productive every second of every day. Sometimes living life to the fullest means listening when your body says it needs rest. My instinct is still to think of naps as a “treat” or something to indulge in on special occasions. But I’m learning to let that go. I’m learning to embrace the “unproductive” “lazy” “indulgent” and “childish” practice of naps.
* * *
Wednesday, September 18, 2019
Today I love my life for going on a walk and rehearsing for auditions even though I didn’t feel like doing either.
I don’t feel like doing any of the things I need to be doing tonight either, or even could be doing tonight. I don’t feel like taking this dog on a walk, and I don’t feel like blogging, and I don’t feel like reading, or watching something, or sleeping, or being alone, or being with friends, or eating, or sound designing, or anything. But I’m going to take this dog on a walk, because I’m being paid to and because I suspect it will actually make me feel better. And I’m going to eat, because I suspect that will make me feel better too.
But that’s as far as I’m going to plan ahead. If I don’t actually feel better, maybe I’ll at least have the satisfaction of doing 2 things. I’ll figure the rest out after I get that far.
* * *
Wednesday, December 11, 2019
Today I love my life for Aaron and Jessa.
I’ve got some kind of poem building in me as this chapter closes. Right now it feels too big to write. Right now I’m simply holding it in my heart, waiting to see how it grows.
* * *
Wednesday, December 18, 2019
Today I love my life for impeachment.
I know it’s complicated. And I know that it all feels so partisan. And I know that it’s very unlikely that all of the Democrats and all of the Independents and at least 20 of the Republicans all currently in the Senate will convict the current President.
But dammit, we did the right thing. Even if it doesn’t lead to removal from office, impeachment was the right thing to do. It showed our commitment to the just laws that govern our citizens and leaders. It emphasized that no one is above the law.
I don’t think impeachment is meaningful ONLY if it leads to conviction and removal from office. No President in United States history has ever been convicted and removed from office. Presidents Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton were both impeached by the House, but not convicted by the Senate. Richard Nixon resigned before he could be removed. But we remember that Nixon was impeached. We remember that Clinton was impeached. We remember that people stood up and said, “You can’t too that.” And that’s powerful. I like to think I’m bipartisan in this, even though I know my own biases run pretty deep. The rule of law applies equally to both/all parties.
* * *
Wednesday, December 25, 2019
Today I love my life for a beautiful Christmas with someone I love.
Here’s the problem with healing old family traumas and wounds. It means that now I miss my family all the time, and especially on holidays.
I think every family has traumas and wounds—it’s just the nature and extent of them that differs. I won’t spend time here describing mine, because that’s not the point. The point is that I’ve spent the last few years in therapy working to heal. And I’m discovering that all of those old wounds and traumas were also a wall keeping me from connecting with loved ones. And now that the wall is crumbling, I miss loved ones. We’re spread far and wide—California to Oregon to Colorado to Nevada to South America.
And holidays can be hard. I wish I could spend Christmas in the kitchens and living rooms of my own family, eating good food and singing and laughing and playing games and watching movies. I miss being with my people. I miss baked goods and caroling and homemade candy and reading aloud. I miss conversations with the people I belong to.
So if I can’t have all of those things with my own family, I’m grateful I could share some of them with someone else’s, and with someone I love.
Patrick and I opened presents together at his mom’s house, along with his sister and her husband, and it was a beautiful chaos of wrapping paper and explanations and thank you’s. We had dinner at a neighbor/family friend’s, where we played games and talked. I read “Angela and the Baby Jesus” and we did a Christmas Mad Libs.
But my fondest memory of Christmas is later that night, when Patrick and I listened to musicals and sang and played Rummikub and talked and laughed. It's so easy get lost in the stresses and uncertainties of life and dating and schedules, especially during the holidays, and in my anxiety, I forget to do the things together that fulfill us: good music and good company and good conversations. That Christmas night, just the two of us, I felt connected to him and to myself and to us as a couple, and it was beautiful. It felt like family.
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