Day 3: How Can I Already Be Behind?

I've decided that even though I feel pressure to do all the things I want to do, I will not give in to feeling like I'm behind already.

I did some art today, I worked (trying to finish up a project that needs to be done tomorrow), I watched an episode of "Outlander" which I started yesterday on the recommendation of a friend. I didn't read but I had a headache until about 2 hours ago, so I'm giving myself a break. I'll read some tomorrow. I watched a lesson in Domestika, so I'm prepping for the next activity.

So far, so good, really. I still have lots of things I want to do to start this year, but I have always felt that January is the time to reflect and clear out the old year and move into the new.

Day 2: Back to the Blog

I make no promises to myself about posting daily or regularly - we all know how that usually goes. For now, I'm content to keep posting here.

I still have a raging headache - sinus infection that is clearing up. It makes it hard to concentrate on anything. I want to do some drawing or painting, but if I hold my head to look down at the paper, there is pounding pressure, so I'm holding off. I did some hands (related to my classes online) and posted on FB.

I just completed the first season of Bridgerton on Netflix, recommended by my friend Julie. It was quite good, actually. Now I'm looking for the next thing. I think I will settle for some reading tonight. I'm reading the new Fannie Flagg book and will be reading "What Unites Us" by Dan Rather, which I started and stopped. My goal is to record what I'm reading, watching and listening to to help track movement in life since I'm not going anywhere or doing anything really of note otherwise.

Other notables:

Current favorite song: La La Latch - Pentatonix, New Year's Day - Pentatonix

Musical I'm listening to: Dear Evan Hanson

I'm grateful to have a long weekend, although I wish I'd taken another day off. I hope my headache goes away soon.

Farewell, 2020! Welcome, 2021!

Happy New Year! It is 2021 - FINALLY!

While I don't believe that the changing of the year waves a magic do-over wand and erases the terrible things that have happened in 2020, I do think the changing of the year opens us up to new hope.

I don't think that all of the things 2020 brought us are bad - if we had to go through some of these things (cultural reckoning, pandemic, climate change realities hitting home), we needed to learn something and take whatever good we could out of it.

I am taking a renewed sense of connection with me into 2021. I have made contact with a lot of folks in my life who I have not been in close contact with for a long time. Some people, I'm in regular contact with now, some periodic, some just a hello text once in a while. Regardless of the proximity, I feel my people around me more than I did.

I am taking with me a creative drive that I haven't felt in a long time. I am missing theatre and interpreting theatre something fierce - it is the one thing that still consistently makes me cry. But I am bringing in art and drawing, and other creative pursuits - stretching and growing. I like that. It feels right.

I'm bringing in more music to my life - mostly Pentatonix and musical theatre stuff (Hamilton, Dear Evan Hanson, Les Miserables) but music is so healing. It helps calm me and helps me sleep.

I have way more ideas and plans for the new year than I should and I know that I will fall down on some of them, but some of them I won't! That's growth right there.

Anyway, welcome to 2021! May we find some hope and peace and eventually, some hugs in real life.

Falling as a Theme in My Life

Apparently, falling is a theme in my life now. It's been a while, but the thought is never far from my mind. While I don't really talk about it much, fear of falling, physically and metaphorically, is a big deal for me.

On Sunday morning, I ended up falling backwards down part of a 1/2 flight of stairs. About 4 steps really. I was backing down the stairs - don't ask - and missed the next step. Next thing you know, I'm on the floor in the kitchen. I landed on my back and left arm. I can totally feel it in my back, neck, and my left arm. 

I know that falling down is a sign of stress for me. It used to be car accidents. I guess falling is better? It means I'm not paying as much attention to my physical safety because I'm distracted by the lack of mental safety I'm feeling.

Honestly, I could go to bed right now and not get up for another year and I'm not sure I would feel better. But I get up every day and get dressed. Like, full-on dressed. With pants. Clothes I would wear outside. Even working from home, I get up and get dressed and wear shoes every. single. day. If I don't, I would slip into the oblivion and never be seen again. Can't let that happen. So, dressed it is. No falling down that rabbit hole. (See what I did there?)

Anyway, I haven't quite decided what I'm going to do about my stress level yet. I have tried a million things, but I feel there is more to be done. 

On the positive side, I received an unexpected bonus from work and I selfishly spent a little on myself. I purchased an iPod Touch. I have been missing my iPod nano since i left it on the last airplane I rode on. I don't like having my music on my phone and it has been frustrating me, plus I don't like using up my phone battery for that when I might need it for communication. My iPod arrived a day early and I LOVE IT. Music has been one of the things that has soothed me since this pandemic began. Being able to carry it in my pocket and NOT be limited to whatever can be streamed makes me happy.

So, here's to not falling and music.

So, 2020.

So, 2020. 

Yeah. Indescribable, really. Devastating. Lonely. Scary. Political. Contentious. Creative. Inventive. Collaborative. Agonizingly slow and fast at the same time. Disorienting. Disheartening.

Pandemic. Social reckoning. Massive political and social unrest. Fires.

I figured I should put something down for posterity. I don't have too much to say about it. 

This is not normal. It is not okay. 

Saving graces:

My interpreter coffee chat group (now online until further notice). Friends. Zoom. "Hamilton" An American Musical" (also known as Hamilfilm) on Disney+. Pentatonix releasing music for a good part of the summer. YouTube. Empathy. "Some Good News" before they stopped doing it on YouTube. Did I mention Pentatonix?

Anyway, this is just a marker. I'd tell some stories or something but March - July are relatively indistinguishable from each other. Then "Hamilton" was released. Then Pentatonix music a little while after that. The days are long but days off are kind of meaningless - all the same stuff, pretty much. Working from home (boo). 

Maybe someday I will look back and have some way to talk about all of this in some meaningful way. Right now, I don't, but I wanted to pop in and say something for that weird day in the future when I'm looking back and I wonder why I didn't write anything in 2020.

Soul Stirrings after a Literal Fall

"How do we forgive ourselves for all the things we did not become?" 

I wish I could claim this powerful sentence as my own, but I have to give credit to Doc Luben, a poet I found somewhat accidentally in the echo chamber of my Facebook. Here is the full poem.

I have a lot more to say about this but I don't have words today. My heart is stirring today for lots of reasons. I hope I'll come back and work through it. Or share. For now, though, I'm just going to leave it here so it doesn't eat away at me.

That is all.

Finding My Voice, Again

In the last three months, several people have asked me about the blog - my sorely neglected blog. First, I had no real idea that anyone out there really was paying much attention to me out here in the blogosphere. Secondly, I think it must be a sign as I have been feeling a little lost recently. Which is strange, right? I have so much in my life - I am so blessed. At the same time, even in recognizing my blessings, I sometimes feel like I am losing my own authentic voice. Not through any means of oppression or anything nefarious. Just that I am generally representing the voice of others. Which I love. How could I be an interpreter and not appreciate that I have the opportunity to amplify the voice of folks who may not always be heard without an avenue simply because of language barriers?

No, the real reason I feel like I am losing my voice is just that the stories and thoughts that I have stay internal most of the time. It's my own sense of propriety that creates this weird imbalance. At the same time, that I have been asked, that I have felt like I need to express myself...these two things in combination are enough to nudge me gently in the direction of the blog. I had originally switched to Facebook for my meandering thoughts, but again, I feel that is a place where the stage lights are bright. This, too, is the internet - if someone wants to find me, they can. But they have to look. And be purposeful. Facebook is a different animal. So, I'm back. Who knows how often. Who knows what I will do or say? I just feel compelled. I still have stories to tell. I still have art to do. Books to read. Thoughts to work through.

So, let's see what happens.

January 2017

I have two things I'm trying to do this month. Well, that's not true. I have a bunch of things but they are NOT resolutions. They are things I'm trying to do.

So for today, two things:

Read "That's Not What I Meant" by Deborah Tannen for my professional book group that is sort of a 2016 failure. I need to read a little more than 7 pages a day to finish it in January. That shouldn't be too difficult. I hope.

Read " Americanah" by Chimananda Ngozi Adichie for "the art of activism" book group with Patti Digh. I want to work to be a better ally. I need to read 21 pages per day to complete the book this month.

So that's it. That's what I'm trying to do. I'm sure there will be strange new unexpected obstacles but I'm going to find a way. Now, off to read my daily pages.

Falling Hurts

2016 has been a year of falling. And falling. And falling. And getting up. Today, I felt like maybe I wasn't learning the lesson - that maybe getting up ISN'T the point. I talked myself out of that, but it wasn't easy.

I have had two physical falls in the last couple of months. Yesterday, I took a very bad fall while on a work trip. Like call the EMTs, bleeding, totally scary, still shaky today, kind of fall. And I got back up again. But I am changed.

I realized today that this is how it happens. You fall (physically, mentally, spiritually) and it HURTS. And you are vulnerable. And you have to trust people will help you up. And they do. But you lose a little faith - in yourself, in your ability to cope, in your ability to get up.  And then you don't want to take a path that isn't perfectly laid out, that isn't smooth as glass, that doesn't have 100% visibility. It's too dangerous. So you don't take that road. You don't take any road. And then the world gets a little smaller. And so does hope. And faith. And trust.

I realized today that I feel like I am disappearing. And that is unacceptable. But I don't know how to stop it. Falling HURTS. And I have been doing it all year. I can't do it much longer and that scares me, too. I am going to take some time to reflect on all of this. I have been ignoring some signals and I guess the real point is that I can't ignore them any longer.

I think I might be visiting here a bit more often right now. This is kind of a good place to reflect on some things.

BookFest 2017

Here are the treasures that made it through the BookFest selection process. I'm quite proud of my selections and feel very inspired to read these books. I have a goal to start one soon, but I do have the usual show to interpret, full-time job and job "on-the-side" which sometimes puts reading for pleasure on the back burner.

Since last year saw the end to our traditional meal at a Chinese restaurant called Hunan (they closed for good), we went to Thai food this year and it was DELISH!

I know I've been away for a while, and I can't say I'll post here regularly, but I do think I'm interested in exploring what I might have to say now. I feel like I'm in a wildly different place now which is exciting.

For anyone who still checks back, I thank you. I hope to be here more often in the near future!