January, 2022
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11jan22
First, I need to stop blogging as I’m going to bed. Because by this time I’ve completely given up on critical thought and all I’m truly focused on is falling asleep (and staying asleep) for the rest of the night. But Stephen King wrote in On Writing that best practice for writing is to write … every day. So I’m here, writing every day. Like I did last year. Hoping it sticks better this year. Hoping at some point it stops being about getting it done and starts being about having something to say.
The truth is I have many things to say, I just haven’t found the personal discipline to sit down and put my thoughts to paper in a cohesive, understandable way. It’s much easier in theory than in practice. As most things are.
Husby and i have been watching the show “Station Eleven” on HBO. We are caught up and now anticipating the finale on Thursday. It has been a confusing, intriguing, layered, troubling, uncomfortable, enlightening series. As I watch it I wonder – do I have anything this powerful to share? Does my creativity hit this level of brilliance? … No one – least of all me – will ever know if I don‘t finish something. That’s the truth.
Anyway. It’s later than I want it to be but I’m going to bed now. I have written for today.
Xoxo, g
10jan22
There are themes that repeat in my mind, ideas that I chew on and spit out and then come back to, still curious, still baffled, still unable to solve.
I guess that’s the problem with being super type A/OCD and wanting, almost needing neat and orderly explanations. My chiropractor has been teaching me the same lesson for years – sometimes there is no cause and no solution. What is just is. And I desperately struggle to find peace in that.
For the past … well, many days, we have been falling asleep to Fellowship of the Ring. It is a movie that John and I both love, but it is also a movie that we came to individually, long before we met each other. I found it on a snowy afternoon when I was in search of anywhere to be but my new room in my new house in State College. I went for a walk, bundled from head to toe against the biting cold and wind. I walked slowly because even then, when I could still feel my legs and my feet, I was cautious and every street downtown was wind blown with snow over a thick sheet of ice.
Back then, there was a movie theatre between College Ave and Beaver Ave and I’d decided that I could spent a few hours warm and alone before returning to a ‘home’ in which I knew no one. The only movie playing within two hours was LOTR. For me, it began there.
I’ve been watching it ever since. And it’s funny and strange to me that this year marks twenty years since that freezing cold day in my life. When I slunk into a seat near the back of a tiny theatre, resolved to fall asleep for a bit before returning to my new digs but was instead transported to Middle Earth.
Time and truth. The ideas that I work over and over in my mind and cannot solve. Time stands still – Bilbo and Gandalf and Frodo and Sam. Time slides by – Ian Holm and Christopher Lee have died. The film quality feels fuzzy. Twenty years. So much has happened and yet, it always takes me back to that moment, that breath of peace I found upon my return to Penn State after nearly a year away. After Italy and 9/11. A lifetime in less than 365 days.
Time is tricky.
Fellowship of the Ring is not. It is comfort and familiarity. It is soothing in an unsettling time.
Xoxo, g
9jan22
Here’s the thing about resolutions — the only person who gives them any power, any weight, is the person making them.
This is what I thought as I lay in bed, so proud of closing my eyes before 9.45p (my designated bedtime) having accomplished all the things I needed to do before bed.
And then, as John and I talked about life and our upcoming week, and how lucky we are to have each other, and how much we love Fellowship of the Ring my eyes – newly filled with eye ointment – popped open and I said “I forgot to blog.”
A thousand things ran through my brain at once and I came to the sad and inevitable conclusion that no, while it did not truly matter if I blogged or not, yes, it actually did matter a great deal to me. I managed to blog most every day at the beginning of last year and last year’s beginnings were much more bleak than this year. If I can’t manage to follow my own prescribed discipline and my own rules, then what am I even doing?
So here I am, talking about nothing because today was a lazy day filled with football and spiralized sweet potato and freezing rain and strange television. And even if I’d had a brilliant blog post idea, right now all I want to do is stop squinting through my eye ointment, lie down and go to sleep.
But I did blog and even though it’s nonsense it means something to me. These words, this blog. It means something to me.
Xoxo, g
8jan22
I was thinking about Paris yesterday.
My sister-in-law is from Paris and she is both so inherently French that it’s impossible to articulate, and also impossibly not French at all – or rather, not stereotypically French. She’s absolutely lovely – funny and kind and always open. She intuitively knows how to cook and she always looks stylish in the way French women always do – effortlessly and understated.
J+I were supposed to be flying to Paris in a few weeks but we won’t be doing that anymore and my heart is heavy and oh so sad. Life happened, which is the way of things, but it doesn’t change my soul-deep disappointment.
The last time I was in Paris …. Well, it was *also* February and it was cold – snow flying horizontally along the Seine. I’d forgotten my coat (Philadelphia had been unseasonably warm the day I flew) and no shops were open on Sunday for me to buy a new one. So I spent my first day in Paris freezing, holding a sweater tightly around my body and breathing into a scarf that never left my neck.
I’d been there with a dear friend – a friend I traveled with frequently back in those days – and we’d explored Paris in winter. Art museums, yes, but also cemeteries and hot cocoa and falafel and churches and movie theatres. I have such fond memories of that trip. I had been so looking forward to sharing Paris with John.
One day.
Hopefully sooner rather than later.
Xoxo, g
7jan22
Ten years ago, John + I drove to New Jersey and discovered the missing piece to our lives. Her name was Lucy (well, actually it was Betsy … ), she was six months old and she knew that we were hers just as much as we knew she was ours.
There have been very few things that hubs & I have done in our nearly fourteen years together that have been better than that drive to New Jersey and the addition of Lucy to our lives.
Happy Gotcha Day my baby girl. I will love you eternally.
Xoxo, g
6jan22
Tomorrow is medicine day.
I have a raging headache today because I’ve pushed myself too hard too many days in a row without resting. And with no real rest in view. Plus we’re forecast to get a lot of snow right about when we’ll be driving to the hospital. So, yeah. Yay?
It’s one of my least favorite new MS things, these headaches. I’ve been tracking them for about a year and the only thing I can find in common with all of them (other than their 3 day life span) is that they come when I’m ‘getting into a groove’. Aka working out a lot and feeling like a normal human (running errands, cooking dinner ….pretty regular human stuff). Anyway. I’m a little frustrated. I’m obviously exhausted.
But I’m wearing my tie dyed PSU sweats and we’re gonna watch an oldie but a goodie tonight. So it’s not a total loss of a day. Plus, Lucy had a spa day (mani, pedi, bath, teeth cleaning…. Basically the works). We’re doing alright.
Xoxo, g
5jan22
There’s snow in the forecast. And I am so deeply happy.
About the snow. Otherwise I’m feeling a little off – tired and irritable and pulled in a million directions. I woke up tired and the whole day unfolded without whim or care to what I’d hoped it would be. Days like today can be soul-crushingly disappointing. Or they can just be ‘one of those days.’ I think it depends entirely on how mentally strong I’m feeling, how disciplined.
Today ended up being ‘one of those days’. Despite trending hard the other way early in the day. I did a longer than normal Peloton ride and John cooked up the last of our leftovers (someone — ahem, me— will have to grocery shop tomorrow. Which I love. So YAY!). We watched the season finale of ‘Yellowstone,’ lit all our candles and snuggled on the loveseat. Tomorrow hubs goes back to work and life begins again in 2022. I have medicine on Friday (likely to be interesting as our usual commute into the city is prime predicted snow time). Dora comes on Saturday (thank Jesus because the house is in dire need of better cleaning than I’ve done the past few weeks). And then Monday will roll around and we’ll be back in a rhythm — Lucy nosing us awake and our days taking their new normal shape.
Tonight we’re falling asleep to Fellowship and it’s painfully comforting. We speak it to each other, the lines so familiar, so known, that it’s like our own love language. I guess that’s thirteen and a half years of falling asleep with the same person. The other half of my soul.
Xoxo, g
4jan22
Last year I decided that spending time trying to think of blog post names was unnecessary. The point, I rationed with myself, was that I needed to blog. And I needed to do it more consistently. I could write about anything or nothing but I had to write.
Those are my parameters this year – I just need to write. I need to be consistent. I need to remember how to be disciplined. To introduce, provide content and then summarize everything in a tidy conclusion. Some of my posts last year did that – some were even good. What mattered to me was that they existed. That was all. And that’s what still matters — although the good ones do make me a little proud.
Today, as we drove from one house to another, certain thought patterns played over and over again in my head. Pennsylvania countryside sliding by, bright winter sunshine and frigid temperatures. Chris Stapleton in the background. I thought about how I didn’t acknowledge the new year, how I didn’t acknowledge Ben’s last Pittsburgh home game. How would people know that it mattered to me if I didn’t post on social? How would they know?!?
And then I reminded myself that people — whoever they are — don’t need to know and I don’t need to tell them. It doesn’t matter if strangers see a social media post of mine proclaiming a great afternoon lunch or a sports team allegiance. My life should just be my own and my joy should come from my own genuine enjoyment of whatever I am doing — without the need to tell the world and — either consciously o r unconsciously — ask for ‘likes’.
It’s a very hard lesson. I haven’t successfully learned it. I find comfort in the feedback — the public’s approval of my curated online life.
Blogging feels different for me – a little piece of my soul, my words. And people don’t read blogs anymore, anyway. Too much content, too much time commitment. Twitter is better – podcasts are better.
That’s okay. I find comfort in writing. I find comfort in screaming into my particular void — this blog, this platform that no one reads. (Well, I read it. It’s like re-visiting different versions of myself through time).
Anyway. We’re ‘home’. Y’know, our other home. Which is weird but also joyful. Tomorrow life revs its engine and Thursday it shifts into gear. Back into routine, husby back to work. Me back to trying to figure out what I’m doing and what I’m working toward.
Don’t worry, I’m figuring it out. 🙂
xox, g
3jan22
I’m watching football.
I used to watch football religiously. I planned my life around it. I dressed the part. (The amount of Steelers jerseys that I own is a little embarrassing). I could speak football-speak with the best of them. I loved it. But I haven’t watched football — like, really really watched it — in a long time.
Football saved me during some dark times. When life felt too unbearably hard. When I felt defeated. And then, when the most awful time of my life happened … when I spent weeks in a hospital room talking to my mother in a coma before she died … football abandoned me. Or rather, I abandoned it. It suddenly felt insignificant, unimportant. Everything did.
**
When I met my husband – long before the day my mother died – I thought he was a Steelers fan. He went to college in Western PA. He wasn’t an Eagles fan. But instead of confirming his love of the black & gold, he made a face, laughed and said he absolutely hated the Steelers. They had the worst fans. He rooted for Big Blue.
Fun fact though, about when we met and our two teams. Both squads were helmed by a draft pick from 2004. And that tied our teams together for years … until now. Well, technically until 2019. But tonight we’re watching Ben’s last home game at Heinz Field and he’s the last guy playing from one of the best quarterback draft classes to date. Philip Rivers, Eli Manning and Ben Roethlisberger. And let me tell you, as someone who has watched #7 from the beginning — he certainly wouldn’t have been my pick as last man standing. He took hits – a lot of them – and Bruce Arians’ offense during the beginning of his career, while explosive, didn’t protect him.
But here we are. Eli retired following the 2019 season and Rivers retired in 2020. I think Ben dreamed of playing into his 40s like Tom Brady, but we’ll see what happens after this season. The rumblings, the implications, are that this is the end of the line. And it makes me a little emotional.
Emotional enough to choose to watch Steelers football seriously for the first time in years.
I was twenty-four when Ben was drafted. I worked as a server at a restaurant in State College. I was a little adrift after graduating college the year before. Tommy Maddox was Pittsburgh’s starting quarterback at the time – someone who might have been referred to as washed up and playing in the XFL before the Steelers signed him to their squad in 2001. He had a couple good years (2002 Comeback Player of the Year!) but he certainly wasn’t their future. All in all, Pittsburgh wasn’t very good and the team hadn’t had a great QB since Terry Bradshaw in the 70’s. They picked at #11 in the 2004 draft and while Eli & Philip were off the board, Ben was there and Pittsburgh took him. It was the beginning of a dominant run of Steelers football. And for me, it was the start of a years long passionate football allegiance. Ben was at the start of my love affair with NFL football. And he’s been there ever since.
It feels strange to watch the passing of time catch up with my QB. It’s hard to imagine Steelers football without Big Ben.
Time is strange. Life is strange.
The only thing that is constant is change.
Xox, g
2jan22
I sort of love the new Matrix film Matrix: Resurrections.
In anticipation of its release, husby & I watched the original trilogy. I confessed that I wasn’t sure I’d even seen the last film and couldn’t be sure I ever finished the second. We watched them anyway, because why watch a new film, years in the making, often denied even possible, if I didn’t understand the mythology that was the original Matrix? Film 101, right?
The first Matrix film is dated, obviously, but I know how revolutionary it was and I certainly respected -and quite enjoyed – its philosophy on life, its vision of the matrix we are all caught in. What it said about free will, control and power. The second two were less impressive to me — less philosophy and a rumination on the Matrix, and more a sci-fi story about a city in danger. I wasn’t sure — after watching them — that I would be up for the new film, but it’s me, so I knew I’d watch it regardless.
And then I began reading the articles. Interviews conducted with Lana Wachowski over email, Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Ann Moss discussing what brought them back, what intrigued them about re-entering the Matrix.
I was in.
Because I knew what it meant to lose someone and wish for them back so desperately, so intensely, that the grief never seemed to dissipate; it just clouded life, colored it in a new, inescapable way. I knew the comfort I’d found in early 2019 when Avengers: Endgame was released and -even though it was universally agreed that it wasn’t as good as Infinity War – I identified with its theme that anything —no matter how bad it was — could be fixed, reversed.
I wanted to see how Lana brought Neo and Trinity back when she couldn’t bring back her parents. I wanted to see how her grief informed the story of Neo & Trinity re-entering the Matrix. I wanted to see how she used the film, and all its perspectives, to help her cope with overwhelming loss.
I was not disappointed. I like its quirky self-awareness, the strategic re-casting of key players. I like the new additions and the new observations made about life and living. About energy and belief and faith.
Is it as revolutionary as the first Matrix?
Nope.
But to me, that doesn’t matter at all. It’s such an enjoyable ride, such a beautiful love story and tribute to characters, to a world created and destroyed and created again.
I’ll watch it a lot before it leaves HBO on January 21.
Xox, g
D5 Creation