“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”

– Thoreau

Saturday/Creative Day: Last week we went to dance week, I was inspired that we built a community dance of any size between this and last year. This week we went to the museum, really happy watching our theatre class, it took a long while to get restarted, but eventually we made it happen. I feel proud, satisfied, grateful and content to have theatre back. Proud because I know how hard it was to find anyone at all let alone the right person in our low worker area, satisfied to have the program back, grateful to have it going well again, content that my own daughter has somewhere to practice theatre. Practiced driving with a friend’s child, got a sandwich, hot pastrami is pretty delicious. When we first practiced on the street I wanted a stage instead, now that we have a stage I appreciate the difference of accessibility that the street provides, to be really in the community and available to the community.

Sunday/Faith Day: Last week I rested hard after going to the park for dance day. This week wasn’t as bad because I don’t bring my plants to the museum like I bring them to the park for dance day. My foot got a little swollen from being down instead of up while driving, but I could have put it up, since it’s not the important one for that. The day passed by really fast, I can’t remember too much about it, things like waiting for the laundry to be open, keeping the laundry as a priority. I remember some parts of the day, but even during the day I had a feeling of it passing really quickly, like my mind couldn’t catch up to my life. I’ve been comfortable, I broke one meta tarsal almost in a loop so my instinct was to keep off it, when I saw the X-ray it made sense, it looks like one wrong step and it could snap. I have barely begun the physical therapy range of motion I am supposed to do four times a day, but I feel good about letting my body lead. Whoever designed those exercises didn’t really know the way my foot was broken. I feel satisfied right now that I feel like I’m in the right place in life, even though it’s a weird sounding life where my spouse works out of state and I’m a mom without my own home, I am at peace most the time being able to be with my friends and try to help the community grow a better educational system. It’s funny how day to day I feel terrified and also completely at peace with the same situation.

Monday/Unity Day: Last week we were sick again with fevers from 100°F – 102°F. This week I rested most the day, I am somewhere between sick and well, I keep smelling musty and showering extra, sweating out germs and toxins is what it seems like. My daughter is doing well in her math class, she finally hit some algebra but we have been training for it for a long time. Khan Academy kids helped to, they have a game with a mystery box so I could reference that as the variable X, Y, B or whatever. Actually A, B, C represent real number that are fixed but you don’t know them and X, Y, Z represent numbers that by nature shift and change, though it doesn’t really matter that’s their convention. Perhaps that’s why the pandemic was so hard things we didn’t think would ever change changed, maybe those things weren’t important or maybe they were but they were not on our radar to ever change in an instant or week to week and then keep changing, it was change overload. I kind of felt helpless, and kind of serene, but kind of at peace too, it was a mix of joy, regret, hope, shame, happiness, sorrow, nothing too intense, but approaching a black mood. But because all the feelings felt muted like pastel colors the overall effect was still a sense of peace, like the kind you get when you are sick as a kid and not dead tired, but pretty tired to the point your body and mind feel like they are sinking you down into sleep.

Clutter Fight Club: This week we organized the kid’s room better, it helps them use their toys and find their clothes and things, it makes me happy when they have access to the things they like, kids are very impacted by clutter to not be able to find and therefore use things.

Tuesday/Self-Determination: Last week I went to the clinic and became aware my foot was broken in three meta tarsals. This week I had kind of a rough day emotionally where I felt like I hadn’t done well enough in life, it’s kind of good to let those feelings out instead of carrying them forever. I really wish I had put myself in a better financial place before having kids so if we ruined a rug potty training it would have been super unimportant, so my husband and I could have raised our kids in private without the stress of roommates and family suggestions, fights and judgements. I really have those regrets that I did work and earn, but I just spent it all and didn’t put myself into a strong position to start my adult life. I don’t regret having kids, I don’t regret getting married, I don’t regret going to Brazil to train BJJ, I don’t regret any art, music or athletic time or money spent, I don’t regret taking the time to be myself and getting into fights with family about being myself. But I do regret the fiscal irresponsibility that led to not being in a more worry free state while raising my kids, that I truly regret and I keep trying to down play it and think positive, but it never goes away that way. I have to accept the truth of the feeling. I don’t understand life right now, or myself. Breaking my foot has given me an individual life again in a weird way. The 19th I have a follow up visit for me, it’s the first thing that is for me and not my kids in a long time. I just don’t understand how all the pieces of my life go together anymore. My kids are doing good in math, my daughter finished two years of math kindergarten year, and two again. That makes me happy because it will put her in a good position for science since she wants to be a genetic engineer. I felt ashamed and confused, but also happy, it’s been a weird mix. It’s like I was never me and I’m being reborn as a me that already existed but I’m just coming into myself, not actually, but it feels like the past was just a story not something I lived through in reality, just a theatre character backstory. I’m feeling really dissociated from life, which happens, it doesn’t cause me huge problems in life, but my mind does run towards apathy and dissociation at times.

Wednesday/Collective Work Day: Last week I was resting at home because I had a fever and also have a broken foot. We did pot Sequoia Strawberries that arrived in the mail. (I didn’t know the ones I started from seeds would sprout the next day, but they did). My dad helped me take the kids to the park to play and fly kites, I really appreciated it, I know I get really distant from my dad because I can’t handle the way he yells at me and disrespects me when he is upset, but I do have gratitude for when he took me flying kites as a kid and how hard he worked raising me. The one doesn’t fix the other as much as I want to let it, but to repay his kindness for the kids I allow him to have a healthy relationship with my kids even though we never fixed ours. I try not to be enemies but I don’t think I can tolerate being really close with someone that hurtful. It was a good day between my dad and I and I’m grateful for that because I don’t expect us to have good days together, maybe we will, but I haven’t come to expect it. We got so much organizational paperwork done and had our official board meeting with minutes, I found it really helpful and uplifting and I feel like we got enough done. I would call my feeling uplifted, but it’s not on the mood meter list I go off, so I’ll call it inspired. We did some work on the bylaws but we did it as a team where anyone could have input and that was special to me, the improvements we made were true improvements so we used group intelligence instead of just showing up and not really involving everyone’s perspective or skills.

Thursday/Cooperative Economics Day: Last week I felt glum getting used to the idea my broken foot would take longer to heal than I though it would before I knew it was broken. Today my dad’s dog is near the end of life, or so it seems, so debating going to the vet for the vet to tell me it’s okay the old dog is dying, for the approval to stand by as my dad’s pet passes away to whatever is next. My kids and I are a bit thuggish, I’m not too worried about us being emotional, but I am aware my dad will be hit hard because he built that dog into a therapist, friend, confidant and too many things instead of spreading out a social network of non-dog creatures. I don’t hate dog people, but I think it’s a trap investing all your heart in an animal with a decade long life span, I think it’s important to diversify your well being so it can’t all fail in one instant. The dog died right before the vet appointment, it had smiled when my daughter told it it was a good dog. It seemed to be waiting for someone to tell it, it had done enough in life, really it did. I was proud of my daughter for offering the dog that validation, being someone who was present in that way to reach out to others and care enough to let them know they mattered. I took it to be cremated at the same place as the last one. It isn’t a bad change because the house will be cleaner, but it’s one of those things that makes a lot of little changes at the same time. It feels like so much is shifting and transforming this year. My husband got my daughter a puppy out of state, but we don’t know when we will see it or him.

Friday/Purpose Day: Last week I was glum about the kids both being misbehaved, in the past my son was good when my daughter was bad. Over the week I had to weigh letting the house get gross and letting my broken foot heal. When I do too much it really seems to affect the foot swelling and seeming not to heal as fast, I don’t know if it’s real or in my mind but I don’t want to play with it. I went for round 2, to help a friend with more paperwork, I only have 1st-3rd grades to cover, but my friend has preschool to 8th grade and it’s so much, I didn’t realize what 8th grade is like now with engineering and computer design built in, either math has become crazy or I went to a really bad district because it’s different than when I was in grade school, quite a bit from my college life from AutoCAD to physics was built into the normal 8th grade now. Now I have that overwhelmed, cluttered, end of Tetris game, running feeling again that was gone for a long time. My daughter is starting to do Penpals, my son is growing so much mentally, I am changing too. I can’t even look at goals right now, it feels like even looking is making my foot not heal. I’m doing my best to do my normal stuff, but I feel 10% as strong as I was before breaking my foot and I feel in a sense as shadow of myself. For so long I compensated with it, but now that’s failing and I am a bit hopeless, a bit grumpy, I still feel good about what I can do to help my friends, I still have fun with them, I still hope for the future, but I’ve hit a dark patch of frustration that no one keeps the house clean when I don’t. I don’t feel happy living in grime. I went out with my friends and helped build a shed, that was fun and it was nice to get fresh air, but I also feel like the house clutter needs to get organize before I can’t find anything.

Last Year to This Year

Last Year: Life was hard, but I was taking it well. My son was hard just because he was little. I felt optimistic about being able to teach my daughter I was satisfied with what I had.

This Year: Things are not worse but I feel weaker to handle them. Some people are disappointed in my maximum effort and I try to not take it to heart, I’m still doing my best almost all the time, almost everyday, but there is a person who wants me to have a magic wand that keeps things from ever changing and I don’t. It’s harder to imagine the future with complaints, I’ve got too much of my own darkness to want any more this week.

Live – Lift – Love

Live – I had a great time doing our paperwork for our non-profit, because I felt like it would never happen.

Lift – I was lifted up by watching my daughter teach and learn theatre at the museum, I can’t believe we have theatre again, I had no idea how hard it would be to find someone to hold that space, it’s a precious thing for the right kind of people, I didn’t understand that before. It’s a different perspective about life and different perspectives are the hope of humanity to survive instead of devolving into war and chaos. It’s an elevated form of being human in a sense simply because it looks back on itself, that simple reflection is a higher level of thinking than no reflection at all.

Love – I love after the kids clean their room and they know where their books and art stuff and everything is and go about using it a bit extra before it slides back into a mess, but there is a slight pain of seeing that some toys never got used before they were outgrown and I wonder if there isn’t a better way to live, like a world with toy libraries? I love that clean for a second moment of life, even though it doesn’t last.

🎭