Just Start Going Now

Hello.

I recently read this Penelope Trunk post where she talks about the research that says "people who skip going to the gym and get mad at themselves about it stop going to the gym. But people who tell themselves it’s okay, just start going now—those people are lifelong gym-goers."

I decided to apply those learnings to my blog. I mean, it's my blog, right? I can stop and start again and it's okay. And maybe I will be a lifelong blogger...in my heart, at least.

It's been so long that I can't exactly pick up where I left off, so I have to just tell you where I am now. I am working a lot. Too much. But in my mind I keep thinking I will figure out how to do a good job without working so much...that equation is made more complicated by now having multiple people reporting to me, which means I have to do an even better job for them, because if there's something I really don't want to be, it's a shitty boss. Even better if I can be a great boss, of course, but at a minimum, please let me not be shitty.

I also don't want to be a shitty mom and sometimes these things feel at odds, but the good news is that I think I want to spend far more time with my kids than they actually want to spend with me. (See now, isn't that a positive spin on the fact that my kids are growing up and are practically men and will eventually leave me and probably hit Ignore when I call them?)

None of this is actually why I'm writing today. Today I am writing because of death. Death has compelled me to get the thoughts out of my head and onto the page.

Death is a thing that's always out there and then it collides with your life and you feel this sense of surprise like, Oh my god! How do people get through this? How did I get through it the last time?

I am days away from the 10th anniversary of my father's death. That is sad, yes. Adding to the tragedy is that in honor of this anniversary, an asshole relative sent me a card, which is more complicated that it sounds, but it's something I consider nothing more than a veiled threat intended to say that he knows where to find me, despite me cutting all contact 10 years ago.

It's a little like having the wound be ripped back open. And it was jarring because I generally feel as though the pain of his death has faded into something I can safely carry with me. But this reminded me how unfair it truly is that we are forced to live without certain people, while others are allowed to continue living and inflicting pain on others.

So then yesterday my coworker experienced a sudden and tragic loss. The kind that doesn't seem real. I am shaken, and I am two degrees removed, so my heart breaks for what she must be feeling. And there's nothing you can really DO. I know it will get easier, but that won't comfort her now.

It puts me into that frame of mind where I just start rolling all the death and injustice in the world together into a massive ball of tragedy and it feels like that ball will just crush all of us. How is it not just crushing all of us?

But then you watch something like this video below and it's like a single daisy sprouting through the scorched earth. And I'll take it. Because it's beautiful.