i took the day off today, anticipating potential flu-like symptoms following shot number two yesterday. and i’m happy to report that, but for some noticeable fatigue at the end of the day yesterday and again today, plus just the tiniest bit of bone/body aches, i seem to have come through it all just fine. phew.
took advantage of the day tho by taking care of a few work things and then knocking a bunch of stuff off of my home to-do list. including finally upgrading from my prehistoric iphone 8 to a fancy new iphone 12. i’ve been working on updating it/transferring info for the last few hours, but i’m sure it’ll be amazing once it’s finally set up.
and i managed to swim 2075 yards today, achey bones and all. ideally i’ll get up tomorrow early enough to pack, squeeze in a 1 hour bike ride, and then dash out the door to begin my mother-son whirlwind college tour in california. i’m so looking forward to getting out of town for a bit. change of scenery is much needed.
***
also, while the whole “we need better gun control/no we don’t it’s a mental health” debate fires up again, i wonder if maybe we could pull a trick play and let go on the gun control piece and respond, instead “fine. sure. we’ll take you up on that. let’s double down/triple down on investing in/supporting better mental health programs.”
because better gun control or no (and we really should have better gun control), isn’t it still a good thing to address mental health? are we throwing the mental health baby out with the gun control bath water?
i’m inventing my own disease. so far the two primary symptoms are the random taste of baby powder in my mouth and general fatigue.
this is the “it’s not even 8:30 and i must climb into bed” kind of fatigue. possibly tied to the second shot of pfizer i got today <<insert quiet “hurray” here>> or just that case of the lazies i described here a few days ago.
still i’ve rallied enough to throw a few words down here, and i’m planning on unwinding to a guided meditation after i’ve wrapped up. really the only thing i’m giving myself a pass on today is that bike that’s staring me down from across the room from atop that bright green trainer. (on a related note, my sleeveless wetsuit arrived today. and wiggling into a wet suit should count for something. i’ve often thought that that ends up being the toughest part of any swim workout…)
hoping i get through shot number two today with only the mildest of symptoms, though i’ve taken the day off tomorrow just in case… and i still haven’t found a good explanation for the baby powder thing. dr. google didn’t even have anything to offer up.
it’s weird that this shit happens so often that i’ve developed a protocol for how i respond to mass shooting. for one, i don’t post on social media about these things. i don’t generally post on social media about anything related to the issues of our times because it just seems kind of pointless to me. what would be the point? to shout out to the randomly curated audience of facebook friends about how these types of things quietly rip me apart inside? why? to solicit “amens” from within my echo chamber? to demonstrate something about my values? or to impress with my insightful take on the thing that keeps happening again and again? (and again…)
i mean it sincerely. i can’t figure out how it matters what i share in that setting.
i talk to my kids about it. i process here in this quasi-private corner of the internet where my intent really is just to capture my thoughts for me. mostly just for me.
and here’s what popped into my head this afternoon. we keep getting so wrapped around the axel around the constitutional guarantees around bearing arms. okay fine. let’s allow every american adult to exercise that right by allowing ONE hand gun to whoever wants it. still have to pass initial screening, still has to be a waiting period, and background check. but not a super high bar.
but for every additional fire arm, and for anything other than a simple hand gun that shoots five or six bullets, you need to undergo a safety training (like we currently feel comfortable requiring in colorado for a concealed carry license), additional screening/background check.
when i mentioned this idea to J this evening he asked we if could add in some kind of regular psych eval for all gun owners. sure. why not. i’m making this up anyway. this could be a sneaky way of injecting some mental healthcare into the dynamic. create a for-profit industry around mental health for gun ownership.
i think there might be something there.
god help me if we fall back into the predictable all or nothing, thoughts and prayers bullshit. i heard somewhere that close to 72% of americans believe there should be some additional efforts around gun safety. we can’t keep not doing anything. we can’t.
i’m not even going to try to organize these thoughts tonight. they’re all over the place.
a girlfriend recently shared with me that her teenage daughter who had been dealing with some depression issues (exacerbated, no doubt, by this covid situation) had accidentally overdosed. my friend administered first aid until the ambulance arrived, and but for the quick actions of that emergency medical team, her daughter might not have made it. (it’s now months later and there’s been some very good progress made in addressing the underlying issues.)
earlier last year, C’s high school friend also accidentally overdosed on his 17th birthday after a quarantined celebratory dinner with the family at home. he didn’t make it. just like that *poof* gone.
and then just earlier this afternoon, just 1/2 hour up the road, 10 people lost their lives when a gunman started shooting at a grocery store in boulder. (just down down the street from one of the universities that C is considering attending in the fall.)
friends ask me if i want my kids to have kids of their own someday. like, wouldn’t it be fun to be a grandparent? and i keep thinking that just being a mother nearly breaks my heart. i feel so hyper aware of how fragile this all is. like how could i ever possibly continue on if anything ever happened to them? and as ______ as the world is today, how can i possibly keep them safe?
around the time when all my friends were first getting married and having kids, my friend K admitted to me that as much as she had always wanted kids growing up, now that she was at that stage when it seemed expected of her, she wasn’t sure if she could do it. she explained that her dog’s recent (unexpected) passing had nearly destroyed her. it wasn’t just that the dog died – pets do that. it was that the dog died as a direct result of her actions. she had given the dog a rope chew toy to worry on, unaware that the dog was slowly ingesting the chewed off pieces. eventually the dog’s digestive track was so tangled in rope and fibers that it was unable to process it all. the way the vet (unnecessarily, in my view) explained it to her, it was the dog’s intestines had been essentially put through a meat grinder. it was painful and the dog, who, up till then, had been the love of her life, died. how could she risk going through that again with kids?
at the time, i felt pretty confident in my response. it had something to do with the purpose of life being to feel things. to experience the profound love, even if that meant risking having to feel that profound loss as well.
an older employee at work who had married a younger single mother at least ten years ago, recently experienced the loss of his 20-something year old stepson. the son had some known medical conditions and was still living in the family home when he passed away unexpectedly. the older man, who had, no doubt by this point in his life experienced loss before, was destroyed. he would call to try and plan for work coverage while he was out, and was inconsolable. this was in the time before every call was a video call – but you could hear it in his voice. and when he finally, tentatively, came in to the office in person, you could see it in his face so clearly. so shell shocked. and he would describe the pain so openly – unable to expend any of the energy that one would typically need to artfully navigate these types of issues in socially acceptable (is there such a thing?) ways. “i don’t know how anyone ever gets over any of this…” he’d say. “it hurts so badly, so physically, i just can’t imagine ever being able to go on feeling like this…”
i’m so glad i have my children. i love them with all my heart and then some. and i wouldn’t change a thing. but having this kind of love opens you up to a vulnerability that seems less and less acknowledged by the world around us that demonstrates on a daily basis how it is losing its heart.
we don’t just need better gun control. we need saving. the soul, the heart, of our humanity is disappearing, and people seem at times just not to notice, and at other times to relish in that fact.
wait, how long does it take to start new habits again? i’m five weeks into this effort to write every day and … it’s still an effort.
and at the same time, i have thrown myself back into training for this race that i’m still not sure will be happening in august. that too is an effort.
in a minute or two here, ima sit for a few minutes to get back into the practice of meditation.
are there people for whom these types of things are no big deal? cuz for me, all of this takes real attention. is there a lazy gene? cuz all i want to do – especially right now – is not much…
I’d almost be embarrassed about the very basic epiphany I had yesterday about how having a sense of security shapes everything … if I weren’t so grateful that I got here eventually.
It feels like a I stumbled across a missing puzzle piece that I didn’t even know I was missing. A key that opens a lot of doors I didn’t quite understand were locked.
I have a suspicion that if I were to pick up even the most elementary psychology textbook I could have learned about what a difference it makes to have a foundation of confidence that things will work out. So basically what I’m trying to say is this isn’t rocket science.
I’ve been so critical, for example, of my mother’s desire to account for all the possible ways a thing could go wrong – did you lock the door? Did you double check? – but I think I can understand those tendencies more/better (more better?) when I consider the giant Grand Canyon sized hole of uncertainty that shaped her formative childhood years. It seems so unnecessary from my perspective but from hers…? Totally makes sense.
Yep this stuff. Psych 101.
I have a friend who I adore but who has this kind of shitty tendency to use people. She’s super generous too and very equity minded, super socially conscious but always scheming. I could never quite understand that part of her until I considered her tumultuous upbringing. Like really tumultuous. Free spirited, will make for a great memoir some day but I know 100% that it left her feeling unsure about her basic needs.
And here I am with my oh-so-evolved que será será bullshit. I mean. I don’t actually think it’s bullshit but I absolutely think it’s privileged. This, I think, is my new definition of privilege.
I’m not quite done with this yet, but wanted to capture these notes here before I forgot…
is the concept of entitlement similar to the concept of privilege? they’re at least related, no?
i’m privileged, for sure. i could probably do a better job of acknowledging that on a sort of regular basis, as opposed to having the more occasional marked moments of reflection. but i do appreciate it.
i also don’t worry about it going away. i think that’s a sign of privilege of its own kind, isn’t it? that sense of calm, security. an arbitrary confidence that everything will be just fine.
but i don’t feel owed any of this. that’s the difference, isn’t it?
now there’s entitled that is associated with privilege, but i think there might be a separate flavor that’s more common with those that don’t have that sense of security that everything will be just fine. just now that occurred to me.
i’ve been sitting here all judgey about those i’ve crossed path with recently that appear to be all about “gimme gimme.” and just now i had a lightbulb moment. maybe that’s not coming from a place of flawed character, or selfishness, but self-preservation, survival.
at work we’re spending some time thinking about where we are, as an organization, on the pathway to creating “an analytics culture shaped around better and faster decision making.” i stumbled across this article, The Evolution of Decision Making: How Leading Organizations Are Adopting a Data-Driven Culture, which identifies five stages to evolving into a data-driven culture. They are:
Over-reliance on managerial judgement such as intuition and instincts.
Siloed use of analytics in a few departments
Expanding use of analytics in several departments, noted by an increasing amount of collaboration
Scaling decision making throughout all ranks of the organization in an integrated, holistic approach
Continuous improvement built on an evolving culture
i think this stuff is fascinating. and not just because of the utility behind using data to help inform decision making. i find it interesting because working to understand the organizational psychology behind making these kind of culture shifts in the workplace reveals so much about humans, how we think about things, how our views shift, how we respond when we feel threatened, that kind of thing.
this is 100% one of those situations where i’m not at all sure about what i can do to get us to where i’m pretty sure we need to go… but i’m totally up for the challenge.
***
on a separate, but related note: can i just say that i think that we, as a culture, need to take a hard look at how we measure success in life. i think we often cling to measuring the quantity of a thing, over the quality of the thing. an obvious example of this is marriage or relationships. “Married 50 years! What an accomplishment!” i’m more interested in talking about the quality of that relationship, not how long it lasted. bitter and long lasting? that’s tragic, no?
my father died when i was 19. i had 19 years with the person i effortlessly describe as my favorite person on the planet. nineteen years isn’t a lot of time, but it was great. those were 19 great years. please don’t call that a failure because it didn’t last forever.
and work too. “Thirty years of service! That’s something to celebrate!” maybe it is. but more and more these days i wonder if some of this could be attributed to the desire to play it safe, or lack of imagination.
T’s friend has a riff off of Hanlon’s razor (“never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity”) that pokes at the ineffectiveness of incentive structures. the other day i riffed off of that riff and offered “never mistake for commitment that which can be explained by fear of moving on.”
quality matters in life. let’s start celebrating that more.
today i learned that the word “sanguine” means, surprisingly, “optimistic or positive, esp. in an apparently bad situation.”
sangre equals blood. i had always just assumed sanguine meant bloody, or at least had something to do with bloodiness.
so that’s the new thing i learned today. that’s the word of the day.
***
we’re still digging out of the snow here on the far far far north part of denver. my neighborhood is like a middle finger that sticks up from the palm of denver into commerce city. the alleys were a little treacherous this morning, the slush that had melted yesterday in the sun having frozen into unpredictable sheets of ice over night.
this morning before my first video meeting, i jogged down the sidewalk to see if there had been any progress made in plowing either of the cross streets to the north or south of my house that would connect to one of the for-sure-plowed more major streets to the east of us.
no luck.
but i did run across a stuck Denver Water vehicle in the intersection. i made my way through the ice to ask the driver if he needed help. meanwhile a man came out of a nearby house and walked over to assess further. “nah,” the guy said. “it’s fine, i’ll make it out. i’m in no rush. i’m government.”
eye roll.
i let the Denver Water guy government his way out of his icy predicament and introduced myself to the other man. turns out he’s a house painter who had to come back to repaint one of the recently sold houses because of some weird deficiency in the product that the builder had switched to. but the noteworthy part of this interaction was this: he reached out to shake my hand… and i shook it.
this was literally the first stranger’s hand i’ve shook in over a year. it felt oddly significant.
snowy road, untouched by any snow plow, two days after storm
later in the afternoon during a break between otherwise back-to-back meetings, i slipped on a sweatshirt and went for a run. partly because i need to move, god damn it, but also to survey the situation beyond our little block. there was still a lot of untouched snowy streets, but the sidewalks were mostly clear. it was a slower run, picking my way through the blocks of snow as i crossed streets, but still felt good to be outside.
where the more major streets were plowed, i ran in the road, and i was reminded that cars and pedestrians can in fact peacefully coexist if (a) everything is slowed way down, and (b) people know to look out for each other. (shared space. it’s a thing. what do we think about it?)
just a block away from my house i spotted an idling front loader that started driving in reverse towards me. i waved and him and asked if he could do a quick run down our street – it’s just a few blocks and could make a difference. he smiled. i got you… and began to turn the front loader in the direction of my street. i smiled back. you’re the best. i appreciate you.
(by the way, it used to be “i appreciate it.” somewhere along the line, it’s morphed to “i appreciate you.” i kind of like it better this way.)
for the rest of the afternoon, i saw that same front loader drive up and down our street a couple of times. i think he must have been fixing those east-west streets too. thank goodness. we are no longer cut off from the rest of the world.
and then this evening i went back in the alley to see about any touch up digging i needed to do so that i’d be able to pull my car out to drive to work in the morning. i met a new neighbor across the way. john. and his wife arlene and they live with his elderly mother. and they’re asian to boot! i felt like i lucked out and couldn’t wait to tell my mom that there was another older asian woman just across the alley! they could hang! (john’s mom is 95 which is no joke. so my mom would be the youthful spirit of the two.)
as john and i were catching up, blake, from the end of the block came walking up the alley towards us with our snowblower, and asked simply “am i too late?” nodding towards the pile of snow i had already shoveled out from behind my car. “well if you’re offering…” i pointed to the as-yet-untouched snow behind C’s space in the garage. and off he went.
i had a bunch of really lovely, small moments with people in my neighborhood today. it warmed my heart.
eleven bee 