I Can't Think of a Title for This Post

It's the end of 2021 and the usual thing to do is to write some sort of summary of the year that is set to come to a close. I don't really want to do that, but I'm feeling called to write something at the moment.

There is a lot going on in my head right now, and I'm not entirely sure how to process it all. That's not entirely true. I feel a poem churning in my soul. Here it is:

How many decisions do we make in a year?

Hundreds of thousands? Millions? More?

So many on autopilot - with little thought behind them.

Many made to temporarily fill a void, ease a discomfort - 

        so many miss the root.

Love 

or (more likely)

a fear of love

or 

a lack of love 

at the root of what ails me. Probably us.

Set an intention to let love drive more decisions.

What's the Point?

 I'm pretty sure that I'm going to come across as a bitter old person here and frankly I'm okay with that.

I admit that I have spent too much time this holiday break scrolling. Occasionally, I've checked out some of the short videos on FB and IG. After doing so for the last week, I have but one question:

 

What's the point?

 

I generally enjoy watching videos of huskies "talking." I miss having a dog, so those videos probably fill a small void in my life. I ran into a video the other day that put a stop to this new habit of mine.

The video involved a husky laying next to a crying baby. It looked like the husky nuzzled the baby a couple of times. I tuned up the volume and discovered the voice of an adult, likely a man, who was hushing the baby and whispering, "Stop crying."

What was the point?

Put down your phone and go comfort the child. You can even snuggle in with the dog at the same time. Are comments like "awww, look at the good boi trying to soothe the baby" that much more important than signaling that you will be a source of comfort for this child? What are we thinking?

It got me thinking and I'm closely monitoring my social media "usage" today. Let's face it, social media usage is mostly just passive scrolling. That's not healthy. Not for me and probably not for any of us.

Rant over - thanks

Feral

We are nearly a full year into the COVID crisis. Road trips were cancelled. Concert tickets refunded. I haven't had a drink or a bite to eat with a friend. I know that many people in the States have ignored recommendation and lived as if the pandemic doesn't mean anything to them, but my guess is that's why the US is currently at 485,000 COVID deaths.

About a month ago, I wrote about how sick I had been during a large part of the 2020 portion of the pandemic. That meant that I hadn't kept up a number of relationships that now lie in ashes. I hardly talked with anyone. I didn't have the energy.

That takes it own kind of toll on humans, or at least me. The less time I spend with people, the more isolated I am, the more nervous I feel around others. I now experience a great deal of anxiety at the grocery store. I like grocery shopping and always have, especially if the store is fairly empty. I'm not so good in a pre-holiday grocery store. Now, I go once a week, early on Sunday morning. It's pretty empty. Whenever another costumer approaches me, I feel myself tense up and ready to flee from their presence. It's the same feeling I get waiting in line to pay. My mind is racing with silents pleas for people to keep their distance from my space.

The last time I felt like this was when I was out of work for a year. I never left the house because I didn't have any money to go any where. I was a social wreck. I'm sure I botched interviews because I had forgotten how to talk with people.

At some point this spring, I will return to my classroom once a week, to work with very small groups of students. I will have to interact with coworkers, with whom I had only worked five months before we all went home. I have no idea how to talk with them. "So, how was your quarantine?" feels pretty weak to me. Or, my loneliness will explode and I won't shut up, blathering on about nothing. I'll be fully vaccinated, but I'm worried about navigating simple human interactions.

Can I hug my vaccinated coworkers and how creepy is it that I want, no need those hugs? Or eventually when I find myself in a bar and maybe a stranger flirts with me? Okay, I'm over 50 and that won't happen, but maybe it will. How do we work out the awkwardness in a way that is healthy and keeps the inner critic at bay?

Clearly, I'll meditate. I'm still so distracted and at loose ends, that I get almost nothing accomplished. I still shy away from humans and normal interaction. I'm trying not to worry to much. Perhaps being in my classroom will be a good distraction.

I'll sort it out. Or I won't. I'll be back in the world at some point, my feral nature sorted or not.

Not an Introvert and this Surprises Me

At the start of the pandemic and the accompanying shelter-at-home phase, people of the Internet divided themselves into two camps: introverts and extroverts. Introverts declared that they had been training for this crisis their entire lives. Extroverts, on the other hand, declared that they were not okay. For all of my life, I had cast myself firmly, but quietly, into Camp Introvert. Eleven months in, I'm not so sure.

As a child, I was terribly shy. Even now, in certain situations, I still am. I do not feel comfortable walking into a gathering with a lot of people and then I'm supposed to sort out where to go. I hate, HATE parties where spontaneous joy is expected to materialize out of thin air. That includes birthday, Super Bowl, and New Year's Eve parties.

I also need a few days after social events to recharge my batteries. I need silence and slow in those periods so I can get my bearings again. If I have to go to a wedding, please do not contact me until a few days after the event. I just don't have the energy.

Oddly, I teach for a living. That requires me to be on and social for six to seven hours a day, five days a week. Yes, it tires me out. It also rejuvenates me at the same time. Like sexuality, I don't necessarily think that all people are either introverts or extroverts. I think that there's a range in there and I fall in that range.

For example, I am a hopeless flirt. I love flirting and shamelessly find myself flirting with strangers at bars, grocery stores, concerts, anywhere. I don't even need liquid courage. Eleven months into this crisis, I deeply miss flirting.

I like going on road trips and talking with strangers in strange places. 

I miss idly chatting with the cashier or bartender or cab driver or anyone else out in public. I love starting random conversations. I have to gather a little energy to do it, but I'm not really put off by the idea of talking with strangers. Truth be told, I often find it very rewarding. I don't think that someone who is 100 percent an introvert likes striking up random conversations.

I fall somewhere in the grey zone, where the color of company is welcome. Don't invite me to a party, but do invite me out to wander the city and we'll have a blast.

Putting in the effort

I have consistently sabotaged my own efforts in so many endeavors, simply because I don't believe in myself. 

I've done this with musical lessons, relationships, friendships, school work, you name it, I've blown up my own progress. This is why I often hesitate to publicly talk about big goals that I have in my mind. If I share them with people and then I emotionally or intellectually self-emolliate, people will know of my failure.

I'm not afraid of making mistakes. I make them all the time with my students or my son. I've even learned how to model dealing with making mistakes. It's the sabotaging of my life and my dreams that I don't want on display. Who needs to see that kind of carnage?

I've decided this year to quietly put forth effort in areas that are important to me, like exercise and writing. No grand pronouncements, just quiet and genuine effort. I'm keeping track of my progress in my journals, of which I have a few. Each journal has a different purpose. Those journals help me be my own audience and actually, so far, have kept the inner critic at bay.

Soft, barely audible baby steps are still steps in the right direction.  

You say you want to end white supremacy? Really?

Great! I agree 100 percent with the goal of ending white supremacy. It won't be easy, but with diligence, we can achieve this goal.

Let's look at today - Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. President Reagan signed the bill making the third Monday in January a federal holiday and then it was first observed in 1986.

Of course, not all 50 states agreed to celebrate Dr. King's birthday. It took until 2000 for South Carolina, Utah, and Virginia to recognize the holiday. 

In addition to white people and their representatives not wanting to honor Dr. King, there are two states that still have a Robert E. Lee Day around the same time as Dr. King Day: Alabama and Mississippi.

There are still states that celebrate Confederate Memorial Day. 

If you are a white person who truly wants to take an anti-racist stand and you live in a state that officially honors the traitors who fought to uphold slavery, I encourage you to work with others around you who also want to be anti-racist and make these holidays disappear. It won't erase history, the Confederacy lost and slavery ended. That's the history. Instead, ending these holidays sends the message that the white supremacist beliefs that lay at the foundation of slavery and Jim Crow and murderers with badges that go unpunished are unacceptable and not meant to be put on a pedestal of false honor.

Ending these holidays won't be the end of our troubles, but it's a good step in the right direction. I don't have a ton of cash, but I'll gladly donate to organizations that are doing this work.

 

I was really sick...

 In 2015, doctors discovered that I had an ulcer that I had that caused a great deal of blood loss. That led to me feeling very sick and a dangerous drop in my hemoglobin and iron counts. Since then, I've taken iron pills and carefully monitor my bloodwork.

Starting in January of last year, I could tell that my hemoglobin/iron was dropping. I can tell because I get out of breath more easily. My heart pounds much harder when I mildly exert myself. My mood dips into depression. I immediately started the process of getting blood work done. I started eating meat after more than a decade of being a vegetarian. 

Sadly, my health continued to decline. I got a blood transfusion on April 10, when my hemoglobin had dropped into the 70s, which is a dangerously low count (or so I've been told). A few weeks later, I had a series of iron infusions. Those helped for about a month, though my count never got higher than 90. It quickly dipped back in the 70s.

From the start of the shelter-at-home until the middle of September, I could hardly move from one room to the next without being short of breath. Suicidal ideation returned with a vengeance. I cried all the time as I retreated further and further into myself.

I reached the nadir of my health woes in early September. I had just started teaching online. One night, I felt as though I was having a heart attack: anxiety, pain in my chest, pain down my left arm, and diarrhea. I told myself that it was the anemia and that if I lived through the night, I would go to the hospital the next day after school, if I still had symptoms. What a deal to make!

I lived and still had some symptoms, so I went to the emergency room. I had not had a heart attack. A series of tests after that would reveal that my heart is in pretty good shape. A week after the non-heart attack, I started a second round of iron infusions, which seemed to have worked this time.

I have energy. I'm able to exercise (at home, pandemic-style). I've just done yoga for the 15th day in a row. I'm doing simple dumbbell exercises for my arms. I've written a little bit everyday. I don't cry as often and I haven't really thought about suicide in a while. I'm reaching out to people and trying to have a conversation with another human (who's not my son or a student) at least once a week. I didn't do any of that from March until September. I feel like a human again.

As of a little before Christmas, my hemoglobin was a healthy 120. That's where is should be. We still have no idea why I experienced the extreme drop of hemoglobin and iron and I suppose that we will try to figure that out. I'm grateful to be past this crisis so I can pay attention to other parts of my health and partake in activities that feed my soul.

Teacher Evaluations

It's that time of year when I need to think about my official goals for my students so administration can determine if I am an effective teacher.

Never mind that we are in the middle of a pandemic that has caused trauma to everyone in its wake. Whatever. We must continue the corporate model of teaching to measure growth.

I'd like to increase the number of students who say hello on a daily basis. I'd like to increase the number of students who go beyond saying hello and engage in actual conversations. I'd like to increase the number of students who respond to at least one prompt a week.

I'm pretty sure those won't work. Whatever the goal it, I will have to be able to measure it with some sort of formal assessment, quantified by numbers. I have no idea what that is, yet. I still have two days to sort that out. Whatever it is, I won't set myself up for failure. It also won't fail by students. Many of my students have lower skills for their age, so whatever I choose, it will still help them improve skills that they need in life.

I'm not thrilled about this idea of evaluations in this emergency, online setting. It's a wonder that I, or the kids, even get up in the morning.