Author: acme

Finally getting back to writing after a drought.  I had started working in October at my daughter’s school as an aide for the 5th grade.  I loved the work, but I think one makes more money in fast food so I needed to find something that paid a bit better.  The day after I accepted the job I got a call from a local liberal arts college about a position I had applied for.  Two weeks after starting at my daughter’s school I was starting another new job.

Having not worked for two years, it has taken a while to get back into the groove.  The job at her school was a good transition to getting back to a 40 hour work week.  I truly love my new job.  It is with a small Catholic college in a Liberal area.  I’m getting used to saying prayers at meetings, which having worked in the San Francisco Bay Area, is something I have NEVER done.  It is nice though.  The environment is supportive.  I suppose it helps that I’m Catholic but I see other faiths embraced as well.

So now that I’ve been at this job for two months, survived the holidays, and am feeling a bit more organized, I’m finding myself missing a few things.  Time for myself is number 1.  My husband is a huge help in getting our daughter to and from school.  He is able to work from home 3 of the 5 weekdays and handles pick up and drop off on those days.  Tuesdays and Thursdays are my days.  Of course, I generally make lunches and dinner while he is good about making beds and cleaning around the house.  I’m very fortunate that way.

Still, I try to work out during the week.  The only time I can swing that is 5:00 AM which means I get up at 4:30 AM.  Going from exercising at 9:00 AM to 5:00 AM has been challenging.  I get to work out 2-3 times during the week currently, but would like to get that up to 3-4.  When I wasn’t working I was going 5-6 times a week.  I figure if I can work out on Saturdays and 3-4 times during a regular week I’m in good shape.  But I have to get my sleep. I do like to sleep though, but to make these workouts I try to be in bed by 9:00 PM. One day recently I had too much caffeine and wasn’t able to sleep at all.  I had planned to work out, then when I realized I wasn’t falling asleep canceled my workout at midnight.  At 4:00 AM when I realized I still hadn’t slept I decided to work out anyway. Afterward, I had a quick shower, breakfast and 45-minute nap before I ran out to work that morning.  Not really sure how I managed to get through the day but that night, I slept like a baby.  This is why I have to stay away from caffeine.

So now we have a new year which always gives me a chance to reflect.  I’ve had many close to me lose loved ones in the last couple of months.  A mother, a husband, a father.  It has made me reflect on the many blessings I have in my own life.  My family, my friends, my new job, even the support at the amazing gym I belong to. I want to do things to encourage and support this joy in my life.  I need to carve out time like I have today, to write, read, and recharge.  I find I’m quite the introvert and do my best recharging alone.  I have a hard time reaching out but am taking steps in the new year to do that with certain things in my life.  I may write about them and I may not.  Time will tell.  But I do see the many blessings I have.  I am grateful for all of them and hope to share more in the coming months.

I hope 2019 is a better year for all.  I hope our country looks to be more compassionate to those trying to make a new life as it has in the past.  I hope those in leadership positions will find wisdom and embrace empathy.  I hope I can be part of the solution in this world to spread that empathy and wisdom.

Enjoy the journey.  Love and be loved.  Find your bliss.  Peace.

Generally, I try to keep my posts positive.  The last one I actually posted was on May 31st.  That makes this post the first for June which is somewhat unusual for me.  The past almost 4 weeks have included the end of the school year, the beginning of summer camp, a dance recital, a job interview, various appointments and of course the daily barrage of crappy news media.  I suspect whatever your political alignment, it is exhausting.  I will freely admit I lean left.  Technically I’m Independent because I have issues with both parties.  These last couple of weeks though have really had me wondering where is the America I know.  My America is far from perfect.  It has its arguments but at least it has a government that represents all the people.  The current problem in our government is issues aren’t being brought to the floor of Congress to be addressed.  The other thing that is extremely distressing to me is the way we are treating people who have come to this country for a better life.  I’ll admit I am far from having all the answers.  There is so much information and sorting through it to get to the truth gets more and more challenging.  I don’t expect anyone to just throw open our borders and let everyone in.  I just don’t understand why we have to split people up who come here.

I think of my own relatives who came in the 1800s fleeing the famine in Ireland.  I think of my 9-year-old daughter and what lengths I would go to if a gang was trying to traffic her.  I think of how my father used to joke that he was “liberal” when he dated an Italian girl in the 1940s and here I married a man of Italian descent.  That hardly makes me liberal!  I think of visiting family who have complained in places where they say things like “why can’t they speak English?”  I wish I could speak another language.  If I moved somewhere where I had to speak a language other than English I would be so excited to have friends who also spoke my language.

I have a hard time understanding how people can be so myopic and not see themselves in the situations that so many of our ancestors struggled through at one time or another to get here.  I find it hard to celebrate the upcoming 4th of July with all of this.  It is hard to cheer on a country that I don’t recognize right now.  I miss having conversations with people I disagree with.  To learn more about why they feel the way they do.  People don’t look for the things in common these days.  They look for the differences.

I miss not having social media.  I’m grateful I didn’t have it growing up.  I like seeing posts online from friends I don’t see anymore, but I miss the fun of the early days where we shared pictures and restaurants not where the latest protest or town hall meeting will be.  Back when things were a bit… slower?  Where we had to read the paper to find out what the President had to say.  Where the news came on 2, maybe 3 times a day not every minute.

I miss waking up in the morning and not being afraid to find out who we have pissed off now.  I mean daily this is an issue.  Not once a week or month, but daily.

I’m far from perfect.  I found out a facility that turns out is holding 2 kids who have been separated from parents at the border, was in my hometown.  When I first found out I went on one of my newsgroups to see if others knew or if it was an office for an organization that allegedly is housing 50% of the refugees that have entered our country from the south.  When I found out kids lived there, who were probably going through one of the most traumatic experiences in their life, I felt like a jerk.  I had helped “out” this facility because of a name of a company.  Now I have to try to be more judicious with my posts because in today’s world anything can be a call to action and that isn’t always a good thing.

I’m exhausted.  I want to stick my head in the sand and have it all go away.  But this is my world, my country, my city.  I have to participate to get it back to what I know it can be.  A safe, welcoming place, that allows differences, but doesn’t use it against others.

For many, the school year is ending in the next couple of weeks.  I hear many parents on the playground talk about how wonderful it will be to have the kids home, not make lunches, and other dreams of vacation bliss.  I, on the other hand, am a bit freaked out.

I am a fan of the school year schedule.  Knowing what is happening with my child from day to day.  As I am still working on various projects and not in your typical 8-5 type job, I also enjoy knowing that we have a schedule down.  The summertime presents the need for camps which includes spending more money.  That would be fine but you discover when you have children that camps can be one day, half a day, halftime for a week, full time for 4 out of 5 weekdays, etc.  School is 8-3, generally with on-site aftercare when needed.  Camp, well you don’t want your kid to look back on summertime and say, “that was the year my parent’s abandoned me in that horrid summer program”. Parents want their kid to be happy but would prefer not going completely broke in the process.

This summer we have come up with a variety of options.  We have our week away scheduled, we have the majority of time covered.  A few half-day camps, most full day camps with a smattering of dance camps (i.e. one-hour classes scheduled twice a week for a month). If you work, as many parents do, and you want this sort of variety, you hopefully have a flexible employer who perhaps allows you to work from home.  Otherwise, you might need a chauffeur for the underaged child to get from activity to activity.  Fortunately, parents, mostly Mom’s, have created a network to share this challenge.

It would be wonderful to find a way to quantify these skills in the real world.  For example, “coordinated multiple and conflicting events for the client (child) including budgeting, transport, and meals.”  This is something I did when working in film but that sounded much more interesting than the role I have now.

Meanwhile, I applied to use some of my mindfulness training of recent years managing two elder-care and one child, to a real-world application.  Luminosity is looking for someone to do a guided meditation.  Ultimately it will come down to whether someone likes my actual voice and pacing.  I’m hoping my audition actually gets heard.  I mean how novel to use tools I’ve learned in life and actually get paid for passing them along.

Like writing though, I won’t hold my breath.  But if anyone out there has an in, let me know.  Meanwhile, as the school year winds down, listen to the soothing gyration of the washing machine.  The water twisting back and forth, like waves, lapping on the shore of the beach.  Your breathing in time with the lapping, tapping the keyboard. You find mindfulness where you can sometimes.

I can be a little overly empathetic to a fault.  I’ll see a look in someone’s eye and think something may be a bit off.  I also have a bad habit of wanting to be a bit of a people pleaser.  This, of course, can be problematic sometimes.  For example, I recently went to a class where the instructor asked me if it had been overly difficult.  I said no as compared to other classes it wasn’t.  She, of course, was having a conversation with another classmate, also a friend, who was explaining how sometimes a break was needed from these classes.  Here I was in a full-on people pleasing, empathetic quandry.  I wanted to be honest but keep both individuals happy.  In my defense, it was early, for a Friday, and I hadn’t had my coffee yet.  In the end, I probably failed to be helpful and felt crappy for it.  But this is the circle I roll in.  I like being polite and having people be happy.  Most of the time I’m around others who feel this way as well, but on occasion, I find myself in a unique situation.  Take for instance a recent ride on BART.

For those not familiar with the Bay Area, BART stands for Bay Area Rapid Transit.  It is the way those of us in the East Bay get into San Francisco when we don’t want to drive.  On the occasion of this particular ride, my husband and I had gone into the city for a show.  It was late-ish, and the train was somewhat crowded.

When faced with such a situation, you look for the open seats.  BART in the evenings, and sometimes in the daytime, can come with a variety of individuals.  Most people are commuting for jobs, some are going into or coming from the city for entertainment as we were that evening.  There were a few seats open so my husband and I grabbed a pair.

Now, I try to be as openminded as I can in the liberal bastion that is the Bay Area, but I will freely admit to not wanting to sit next to someone who smells or may look like they want to be left alone.  On this evening, there was a pair of gentlemen who were in the set of four seats that face each other.  They were sitting diagonally across from each other so there were two other seats available.  I did not sit near them because, well, they had facial tattoos.  Now I don’t care what race you are, but if you have facial tattoos, I’m probably going to not sit near you.  Does this reflect poorly on my character?  Perhaps, but personally, I find those who have facial tattoos as individuals who maybe had some issues in their past.  I’m not anti-tattoo.  But face tattoos kinda cry “hi, I’m a gang member with a record who may or may not have anger issues”.  So yeah, we didn’t sit near these guys.  Others on the train stood or found seats elsewhere until we made it to one stop where a younger woman, got on and asked one of these individuals to remove their feet so she could sit in the seat across from him.  He did and she sat, but I guess felt that he was… looking at her funny?  She begins screaming at him about his face tattoos and they start yelling “bitch” back and forth to each other.  My husband and I are relatively close by.  The four women across from this threesome are looking at each other anxiously.  I think we were all waiting for weapons to come out.  As it continued though, something happened.  I actually was feeling bad for the face tattoo guy.  This woman was just yelling like she owned the place.  We finally came to a stop and what apparently was a third friend, gets off the train.  We hold at this station for a minute or two and the two other guys end up getting off as well.  Now we are left with the woman who starts telling us how she normally isn’t like that.  We all nod.  Sure…

I was happy to get off the train that night and happy that no weapons showed up, but seriously, if this had gone to court, I think I would be on face tattoo guys side.

I used to get annoyed when people would say “where did the time go?” I mean time is fixed. In reality, it doesn’t speed up or slow down.  Admittedly when I was 7 and waiting for my March Birthday in February, that month would drag out.  Now of course that I have passed the half-century mark, I’m not as anxious to see those days fly by.  Once you have a kid, it seems time takes on a whole new form.  Mornings can go smoothly if you have a routine where everyone complies.  That of course rarely happens.  If you are a parent who works outside the home, you have a hard out so you have to clear out the house.  If you are a stay at home parent or you work from home, it can be easy to watch time compress in the morning while you are trying to hit deadlines.

I have always worked with lists of things to get done.  I like having a pre-loaded item on these lists too that I can easily scratch off in the morning.  Getting up and drinking coffee are a couple of favorites.  Unfortunately, as I get older I’m finding things showing up that aren’t on my list.  For example, today I received a phone call from an organization I apparently wanted more information from.  They have my name and phone number and I honestly don’t recall contacting them.  Certain calls you can scratch off as just fishing for money or info.  This one though, there is a possibility I reached out to them.  I just can’t remember.

Now in case you are wondering, no I do not drink.  Not anymore anyway.  So it wasn’t a good night gone awry.  I did lose some memory after giving birth.  I have the ability to remember the names of kids I went to school with 40+ years ago but if you ask me the name of that woman I see regularly at the gym or maybe the parent who I volunteer with, well there is a 50/50 shot I will remember his/her name.  I’ve decided that those people who asked “where the time went” were really onto something.  As you age, apparently there are hours and days that go missing.  When you have a child that is compounded.  If you are caring for an older parent or relative, you never seem to have enough for them.  Franklin/Covey did not explain where these rocks go.  I should be following them.  I should be able to catch up somehow.  Apparently not.  Clearly, those years I was chiding those who were asking the question were actual soothsayers who saw my future before I did.

I know I really don’t need another app or Google in my brain. That to me is just making things harder, not easier.  I know it won’t help me remember why I called that organization that was following up and it won’t help me remember the name of some fellow frazzled parent.  Honestly, there are days that I wonder how we ended up in this information overload.

So I go back to my lists.  If I follow them, I’ll get what I need to be done.  I must stop getting distracted.