Category Archives: Personal

Quarantine Check-In!

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Hello everyone! How are we all doing with the quarantine situation? I’d love to hear from you folks! Feel free to sound-off/share/commiserate in the comments!

Hibiscus in my front garden

I have spent the last two weeks vacillating between deep anxiety and surprising calm. I am enormously worried for friends and family and from the general population at large. I feel so much concern and gratitude for all the people who are still going into work because they are essential services: this, of course, includes doctors and nurses and pharmacists and techs and janitors and cooks and other hospital support staff; it is also includes EMTs and grocery store workers and postal workers and truck drivers and food delivery drivers and fieldhands who are keeping farms (and thus our food supply) moving.

On a personal level, I have a cousin who is an EMT in Austin, TX and a very close friend who is a pharmacy tech at a hospital in Ohio, and I am very worried about both of them. They are the frontlines of this situation. They face the possibility of contamination every day and its terrifying.

I am also very worried about the financial fallout of this situation. I do not care about big corporations or the stock market or whatever else the death cult that calls itself the GOP is concerned about. I’m worried about normal people who are losing their jobs, or if not losing them outright, are at least losing income for weeks or months. I am worried about small businesses like family-owned restaurants and little boutiques and mom-and-pop grocery stores and indie bookshops who have lost business or been shut down completely. I am worried about artists who live commission to commission at the best of times. And debut authors whose first books are coming out right now and who may never get another book contract if sales are bad enough during this slowed down market.

Mr. Erasmus Flattery helping me read…

And yet… personally, I’m doing ok. Pretty well, actually, all things considered. And I feel a bit guilty about that. My job is already part-time and inconsistent so I’m not doing any worse than I already was, and the job will still be there when things settle down. My mother, who is my financial support system, is working from home and her employer is working at reduced capacity, but otherwise she’s ok. We’re all staying home as much as humanly possible. No one I know personal has gotten sick (yet, fingers crossed). And I am, for the most part, enjoying all this sudden downtime. For which, again, I feel guilty.

I have read 2 novels, a novella, a graphic novel, and an audiobook. I have written quite a few blog posts/book reviews. I have sat comfortably in my front garden with the flowers. I have cuddled with my various cats. I have taken advantage of the Met Opera’s free streaming previews and have now seen Carmen, La Boheme, Das Rheingold, Die Walkure, and Siegfried for the first time ever! (And loved them!) And I have taught myself to cross-stitch. All while keeping up with laundry, and dishes, and dusting/sweeping, and cooking dinner.

My very first cross-stitch!

I have always been an introvert who enjoys staying at home. As long as I have the internet and books, I’m good. The only things I really miss so far are: walking around at the park (which my mother and I usually do quite often), going to the movie theatre, and window-shopping at the mall or some such place.

And again, I feel guilty about mostly enjoying my self-isolation. Even though it in no way negates my anxiety, fear, and anger over the state of things: the people who are suffering physically or mentally or financially because of this; the people who have or are going to die because of this. I am absolutely blindingly-furious about the callous, evil, and incompetent responses from the federal government writ large. I have several rants about all of that, which I have shared with friends and on my facebook, but which I am (for the moment) going to avoid sharing here. I will try to avoid letting this blog devolve into moral and political ranting. But if this situation continues much longer in the directions that certain political figures have allowed it to, I may reverse that decision. We’ll see…

Anyway, please tell me how you all are doing? Good, bad, in between! No judgement here! Only empathy, understanding, and commiseration. I’m sending virtual (safe-distance!) hugs to you all! Be safe and smart!

The Joys of “Social Distancing”

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I’ll be honest, when this whole COVID-19 thing was first becoming an issue, I wasn’t that concerned. I knew it was spreading fast but the effects didn’t seem all that severe for the majority of cases. No worse than a bad cold, it seemed to me. I knew there was reason for caution and concerned, but I figured as long as people used some common sense, it would be fine.

Now that we’re several weeks into the spread and it is officially a pandemic, it looks far more serious. The numbers coming out of places like Italy and France are, frankly, horrifying. And the U.S. as a whole is not dealing with the issue very well at all, even if some individual cities are trying their best. It is pretty shocking to watch all these huge events and things being canceled: sports events, conventions, etc.

I was really surprised when the Houston Rodeo was canceled! (I live in Houston fyi). The rodeo is THE biggest event in the city every year, and one of the biggest events in the state, right behind SXSW in Austin. The financial cost of such a cancelation has to be ENORMOUS. A lot of comic/pop-culture conventions are being canceled around the country too. And of course, all sports events have been suspended. I don’t watch a lot of sports, but I am a tennis addict so I’m REALLY feeling that loss (especially since Indian Wells, one of the bigger tournaments of the year, was supposed to start last week…).

Now that the situation has proven itself more serious that I initially thought it would be, we are all being asked to practice “social distancing.” My mother’s employer has shut down all their offices and her entire company is now working from home (she’s currently holed up in her room with 3 computer monitors, doing conference calls remotely). I work for a small online retail business and asked my employer (who is also a friend) if I could take the week off from shipping items in order to help support the whole “social distancing” thing. So I’ll be home all week too.

I’m not hugely concerned about my own health. I get sick a little easily but I’m pretty sure IF I got COVID-19 I’d probably get through it ok like I would the flu. But mother is definitely in the high-risk/immunocompromised category (with diabetes, asthma, a history of getting pneumonia at the drop of a pin, and several other co-morbid issues), so I am trying to be extra-careful not to bring anything home to her.

So we haven’t much left the house since Friday. We did do some grocery shopping yesterday – we are trying not to panic-buy and hoard but we definitely needed SOME things. And I did – in a kind of show of solidarity with the Asian community who has been so hit by racism in the midst of this – go to Chinatown for lunch at one of my favorite restaurants on Friday. My mother and I were the only people in the restaurant. It was sad. I know as more and more people self-isolate that ALL restaurants and retail stores are going to be taking a financial hit, but Asian communities are definitely getting the worst of it right now.

What have been I doing with isolation, then? I read a whole novel and a graphic novel so far. I’ve watched quite a few episodes of Fairy Tail (an anime, for the uninitiated). I did a bunch of laundry and dishes. I cleaned every flat surface, door handle, light switch, and remote in the house. Several times. I played Clue with my mother, my brother, and my brother’s fiancé (I’m not a big fan of board games overall but my mother and brother love them and they begged, so…. *shrug*).

This week I have plans to read a bunch more. Write some blog posts. Watch some movies. Maybe work on a puzzle I started months ago but never got far on. I do have some work-related things to do from home – logging receipts and basic bookkeeping things mostly. But I am hoping to take advantage of my time off to do some ME-things. *fingers crossed*

So how about you folks? How are you all managing the situation? Are you able to work from home, or are you in the unfortunate category of people who have no choice but to go in to work? If you’re self-isolating, what are you doing to pass the time?

Flatten the curve, my friends! Flatten the curve!

Smashing Plates

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I don’t know about anyone else, but I am having a rough week. Outside of, or on top of, the same sort of coronavirus concerns that the whole world is experiencing (though, I’ll be honest, I hadn’t been quite as concerned about that as maybe I should be until the last couple days), I am, on a personal level, having a “valiantly resisting the urge to smash plates on the counter/going off to scream into a pillow/trying very hard not to angry-cry” sort of week.

I don’t want to get into specifics, but suffice it to say that I am feeling ill-used, and taken-advantage-of, and taken for granted. I THINK, though I am never sure these days, that I am justified in feeling this way. But… well, my family (and an occasional friend) has always had a habit of implying (or flat-out saying) that I am a) overreacting and being melodramatic, b) imagining or misunderstanding things, and/or c) misrepresenting or actually lying about the things I have to put up with… so I live in constant fear that I really am imagining myself worse off than I actually am, without realizing it. Or that I am complaining about things that are totally normal and maybe I really am just over-sensitive, or in some cases (as my family has been known to accuse me of) just being lazy or selfish. I honestly, genuinely can’t tell anymore.

I know gaslighting is a thing. I understand the concept. But how do you know if you’re being gaslighted, or if you really ARE just that unreasonable/over-sensitive/etc? I don’t have an answer.

So I spend a lot of my time biting my tongue, screaming into pillows, fighting off anxiety attacks (or failing to fight off anxiety attacks and proceeding to hyperventilate, cry, and so forth), and complaining to my two best friends who are pretty much the only people I trust to NOT tell I’m being a whiny baby.

I have been swallowing back so much anger and frustration and anxiety since I was a teenager that I sometimes (more than sometimes) feel like there’s a black hole at the center of my chest slowly eating me away. I always – and I am not exaggerating, I really mean ALWAYS – have a pain in my sternum and in my back right between my shoulder blades. It never goes away. Since I was 14 years old.

I spend so much of my time wishing to be somewhere else. Wishing to be someONE else. Anyone else. I do not like who I am. I do not like where I have ended up. Child-me, teenage-me, would be so disappointed by today-me. Hell, today-me is disappointed in today-me. And I am trying so SO hard to change that, but so far it isn’t going so well.

So, I spend a lot of my time swallow back screams and tears and resisting the rage to break things – plates, windows, mirrors, myself.

This is not a book-related post, for which I apologize. People don’t really need or want to hear me complain about my life. Sorry. I have finished both Middlegame and Disney’s Land. Hopefully, I will post reviews for both soon. But today I just needed to write this. In the hopes that writing it might help purge some of the anger. I’m not sure it worked.

2019 Sucked, Here’s to 2020

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This meme (and the second near the end) were found floating around on Twitter. I have no idea who originated them.

In order to move forward being open and honest, I have to first look back a bit. Because the last handful of years have been increasingly difficult and painful.

At the end of 2018/beginning of 2019, I posted to Facebook a long explanation of exactly how bad 2018 had been (financial worries, family problems, crippling depression, being suicidal for months), and how badly I needed 2019 to be kinder and give me a break.

So, of course, 2019 decided to double-down instead. It said “you haven’t seen bad yet! Yeet, Bitch!” It sucker-punched me and then kicked me in the face repeatedly while I was prone on the ground.

I was begging for a break, for some mercy, but instead this is what my year looked like:

  1. my grandmother fell and fractured her spine in January and was in the hospital for a month
  2. My mother had a heart-scare in February and was in the hospital for a couple of days
  3. Also in February, one of our dogs escaped the yard and was hit by a car – he survived but my mother and I both had to take out a substantial loans to pay for his care
  4. In May, just days after her birthday, my mother was laid off from her job (keep in mind, I was already mostly-unemployed excepting for some part-time work and money was already very tight)
  5. In July one of our cats (my mother’s Baby Girl, Mieko) was diagnosed with cancer – after thousands of dollars worth or tests and early treatments, it was deemed untreatable
  6. In August, my grandmother (still recovering from the spine fracture, and already suffering from an auto-immune disease) was diagnosed with Parkinson’s
  7. In September, while caring for our dying cancer-stricken cat, one of our other cats (MY Baby Girl, Bobbi) died very suddenly of an aneurysm with no warning whatsoever
  8. In October, Mieko died
  9. In November, with my part-time job becoming more and more financially unstable and being unable to pay me consistently, I got a second job in hopes that I could eventually make it a FULL-time job — only to learn a couple weeks later than, actually, the store is closing at the end of January at which point its back to the drawing board.

Things were so rough at the end of there, that instead of saving the money my dad sent me for Christmas, I used it to buy Christmas gifts for others. The good news is that my mother finally has a job again, but having been financial unstable for so long, it will be months before we can crawl our way out of severe debt and back into something at least resembling manageable.

After 2016 was rough, and 2017 was a little worse, and 2018 was horrendous, and 2019 was an evil sadistic bitch, I feel tired and beat-up and hopeless. I’m afraid to even bother asking the universe for help anymore. It always responds by kicking me while I’m down.

But I keep telling myself I have to keep trying. Trying to keep myself together, trying to find more direction and purpose in life, trying to find more stable work. There are tiny glimmers of possibility here at the beginning of a brand new year and a brand new decade. I starting to read more again. I am trying to save money again (for the first time in years). I am looking at some possibly good part-time jobs (*fingers crossed*). But I am afraid to get my hopes up, so I guess we’ll see…

So here’s to the year 2020: may the world be a little kinder and more merciful this time around.

Most years (though not all), Neil Gaiman writes a new “Wishes for the New Year” on his blog that is encouraging and hopeful. He said he wasn’t going to do one this year, and then in the end couldn’t seem to help himself. The one he wrote for this year is a little different than the kind of thing he usually writes, but it seems fitting, so I’m going to end this post with his wish:

…I hope in the year to come you won’t burn. And I hope you won’t freeze. I hope you and your family will be safe, and walk freely in the world and that the place you live, if you have one, will  be there when you get back. I hope that, for all of us, in the year ahead, kindness will prevail and that gentleness and humanity and forgiveness will be there for us if and when we need them.

And may your New Year be happy, and may you be happy in it.

I hope you make something in the year to come you’ve always dreamed of making, and didn’t know if you could or not. But I bet you can. And I’m sure you will.

— Neil Gaiman, from “A New Year’s Thought”

To Be Open and Honest

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A lot of my friends write long, thoughtful “year-in-review” letters to send to all their friends and family around Christmas or New Year’s. I’ve never entirely understood this, and I’ve often wondered if it’s a midwest thing (having gone to high school and undergrad in Kansas City, most of my friends are from the midwest). No one in my immediate or extended family has ever done this in my entire life, and it is something I had never been exposed to until my high school friends started doing it.

I don’t write these sorts of letters myself. Frankly, my life is not interesting enough to write about, and a lot of things that I would include in such a letter are not necessarily things I need/want everyone to know about. The friends/family that I feel comfortable sharing such information with already know.

But I sometimes wonder why I don’t share the bad things, the problems, the embarrassing bits more freely, like I see so many of my friends do online – whether it be twitter or facebook or a blog or whatever. There are a few reasons, of course. First, I have an extremely high capacity for embarrassment. The smallest things mortify me. Seeing other people do or say something embarrassing mortifies me. There are entire movies and tv shows I am physically incapable of watching because the second embarrassment is genuinely painful to me. So there’s that. There is also the problem, as always, of not wanting to share my problems for fear of being accused of whining, or of trying to garner pity, or some such thing. And on top of all that, I am constantly fighting the conflicting desires of wanting people to care while also not wanting them to worry.

For the most part, I don’t much care what strangers think of me. I can share thoughts and feelings anonymously on twitter or tumblr or where-ever without much concern. I can give talks at conferences without undue levels of terror (I mean, there’s always SOME terror, this is me after all), because I know I will never see most of these people again. But I balk at the idea of telling some of these things to people I really know, people I will have to face. Hell, half the time I cannot even stand the idea of letting a friend or colleague read something I wrote – no matter how much I trust that friend or colleague. The room full of conference attendees doesn’t matter. YOU all do. And so I cannot stand to face judgment, even the gentlest and kindest of judgments. Mine is a very fragile ego, all told. I have low self-esteem even on my best days. And let’s be honest, the last few years have not been my best days.

A few years ago, I started an anonymous blog for the expressed purpose of writing about my depression and my bad days. I very carefully avoided any possibility of my name being attached to it. Created a new email address for it, used no names, never mentioned it to a single friend, did not share links on social media. The people who found it, who found me there, were people who identified with the topics, the subject matter, the tags I used. I stopped posting there ages ago (abandoning a blog for not the first time). It’s still there though. I didn’t delete it. But no, I will not tell you what it was called or how to find it. There are still things on that blog I could never stand certain people to read. Ever.

All that being said, I have decided to try this again. This public blogging thing. Obviously. Being as open and honest I can stand to be.