Category Archives: writing

depression, pandemic, writing

A Long-Overdue Brain Dump

It happens on the regular: I put off writing about what I need to write about because I have other topics I “should” be posting, like the monthly cataloging of the blooms in my garden, or the annual missive to my son on (or around) his birthday.

Screw that. I keep this blog around for me. It’s no longer the angsty ramblings of a twenty-something who’s trying to keep in touch with all of her friends at once. This is the public journal of a middle-aged working mother. Basically, it’s a lot easier to find references to life events after the fact using an indexed database of words than it is to rifle through a handwritten journal.

The thing is, though, that there haven’t really been very many life events to record this year, with the global pandemic and all. No tropical vacation, no visiting friends and relatives in other cities, no local bands and food trucks downtown, not even any photo walks along the river.

I guess that’s one reason why I haven’t been sitting down and pouring out the contents of my brain lately: there hasn’t been anything that I especially wanted to record for posterity, or to share with others by crossposting to Facebook. I sew stuff, I grow stuff, I work, I pretend to be a badass martial artist, but it all feels like Groundhog Day.

And now autumn is settling in.

The fall foliage is beautiful, and I’m definitely a big fan of hoodie weather… but I’m solar-powered. It must be the string of chilly, overcast days that are getting to me.

Or maybe it’s the sameness of every day working from home and supervising my son’s remote learning. Maybe it’s our geriatric cat pissing on the carpet by my sewing machine, instead of her litter box, making one of my primary hobbies difficult if not impossible for the time being. Maybe it’s that jowly, puffy, saggy, tired, worn-down face staring at me from the bathroom mirror every morning. Maybe it’s my Krav Maga class getting pushed later and later in the evening, so that I leave for class about the time I’d normally be starting my son’s bedtime routine, meaning that a) I feel like I can only go once a week for his sake; and b) when I do go, I’m already tired and not at my best by the time class begins.

Maybe my brain meds need adjusted. Maybe I need more than just brain meds. Maybe I need to get off the brain meds.

Maybe everybody in the world is having a hard time right now, or maybe it’s just me.

pandemic, randomness, writing Leave a comment

Life During COVID-Time

Funny how I’ve slowly joined the throng of bloggers who don’t really blog anymore. My husband jokes that he knows something’s bothering me when he reads about it on my blog (and I’m pretty sure he’s the only person who reads it if I don’t cross-post to Facebook).

It didn’t used to be like that. Before I had other responsibilities (e.g. parenting), I would blog almost daily. Granted, that was also before everyone had smartphones and was online, so it was pretty much an entirely different world. Back then, I wrote about my life in the kind of excruciating detail you’d share in person over coffee or other adult beverages. Nowadays, I think twice (or even three times) before posting any Personally Identifiable Information, even though my blog is set to have search engines ignore it.

It also doesn’t help that I accidentally nuked all of my (incorrectly-applied) WordPress theme customizations recently, and that I completely forgot how I tweaked my photo editing workflow on desktop for dealing with the Apple-specific HEIC image files that Photoshop won’t open. Oh, and I’ve been using my widescreen monitor as a second display for my work laptop, but plugging that HDMI cable back into my tower is a royal pain in the butt. (Luckily, I have an HDMI switchbox arriving next week that will solve that annoyance.)

I know that a regular brain dump is vital to my mental health. I know this, yet other things keep taking precedence. Hobbies like gardening or sewing used to be the main culprit, but now that I’ve been stuck at home for the past two months*, other responsibilities and tasks are more immediate. Our dishwasher broke at the very beginning of “coronavirus season,” as my son calls it, so a non-trivial amount of time goes toward washing dishes lately (split between myself and Aaron). I spend some time planning my workday and Connor’s remote school day. I spend 15 minutes outside weeding while Connor watches his evening TV. Once Connor goes to bed at night, my brain is pretty much done. I might do some reading, or watch Netflix with Aaron when he’s not working, or watch YouTube by myself if he’s at work, or play Spider Solitaire on my phone — something sufficiently mindless to wind down for the day.

If I were the avid journal-writer I used to be, this would be the perfect opportunity to capture what life is like during this Very Unusual Time. Granted, I do still write a snippet every night before bed in the Exist app, so I at least have a brief snapshot of each day.

…As interesting as THAT might be. eyeroll

We have at least four more weeks of the stay-at-home order here in Ohio. School will be remote for the remainder of the school year (ending May 28 for our district), and I’ll be continuing to work from home for that time. It remains to be seen what kind of daytime options Connor will have this summer, but I’ve signed him up for four weeks of Cub Day Camp and one week of science camp so far. If I need to work from home during the times when we don’t have anywhere for him to go, I think my boss will be amenable to me working from home, now that we have the infrastructure (and company-wide precedent) for that sort of thing.

I do have to say that Springtime is probably one of the best times to be working from home, though. I can watch my favorite part of the year as the greenery pops up and the first blooms open ALL DAY LONG, not just briefly before and after work and on the weekends. (I feel bad for Aaron and Connor, though, who are both dealing with major seasonal allergies. Spring is NOT Aaron’s favorite season, for sure.)

* deep breath *

OK, brain dump successful.

I’m going to make writing in general a priority for the coming weeks. I’ve made it a priority to spend at least 15 minutes outside every day (I’m totally solar-powered), so perhaps making this a secondary priority will add to the mental health boost I so desperately need during this time of extreme weirdness.

Peace Out.

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Taking a Moment to Freewrite

I have three unfinished drafts in my WordPress. I didn’t used to do that (side note: is that phraseology a Midwestern thing, or just a weird grammar thing?), but I find myself writing drafts more often now that I don’t have access to either my Google Docs or my blog at work, so now anything I write during the day lives on a thumb drive that may or may not make it out of my purse at home when I’m in a writing mood.

It’s over lunch breaks only, I swear. Anyway.

I also have several drafts in my stuff.txt file on that thumb drive, one of which is my semi-annual Dear Connor post, as my son turned seven on Labor Day. That’s one of those posts that feels kind of important — like, I shouldn’t be writing anything else on my blog if I’m not working on getting that one thing posted before the end of the month. (I haven’t posted one of those on his actual birthday since he was in diapers, I think.)

Writing — journaling in particular — is important to me on several levels, and I think that feeling of running up the down escalator that I get sometimes is related to a lack of writing time. Not that one is causal to the other, but they’re kind of indicative of one another, is how I think I mean to say it. Not only that, but I’ve been journaling for so long (some 35 years, off and on) that having a gap in my life’s record is a huge bummer to me later in life when I go back to reference some epic major life event and all I find is, “Mom and Tom separated a few months ago. I go to Buckeye High School now.”

Always pack your journal in your go bag. Now I know.

At any rate, I want to make a habit of sitting down at the end of the day and decompressing behind the keyboard. (In front of the keyboard?) Whether I hit Publish at the end of the night or not, I know that Future Me will be grateful for the time spent.