A while back, I said I planned to write more thoughtful posts and fewer sewing and book posts. That commitment might have happened on a Superwoman day, or sometime before the pandemic. It seems like it was too hard to manage, because despite my commitment, the blog hasn’t changed.
Now, I sit here with a collection of five books that from outward appearance have nearly nothing to do with one another, and I’m trying to figure out how to knit them together into one cohesive post.
By the time you read this, it will be February. Things might be better than they are now, or they might still be about the same.
Maybe you want to consume something other than news, to stretch yourself, or just escape into a good story, learn something new, or melt into a puddle… one of these books might just do it for you. I hope so.
Today, the daily devotional we read during home school included poem about presenting a positive demeanor to the world and not bogging people down with our personal woes and health concerns. Tell God how good you feel, and God will make it so, was essentially the closing prayer.
This afternoon, after a week-plus break from social media, I hopped back on IG. One of the first posts in my neglected feed was a slideshow about white people’s toxic tendency of pretending everything is OK all the time. According to the infographic, this prevents Black people from being open about their reality and makes it hard for them to trust white people or feel safe around them. White privilege allows us – encourages us? – to pretend things are OK even when they aren’t.
Many times during the pandemic, it’s felt like my hold on reality was tenuous. My body has been hurting, and it keeps getting worse. My brain was overloaded with the daily onslaught of requests. It is literally burning right now, right around its outer membrane.
After a particularly hard week, with major parenting struggles in addition to the regular parenting demands, I was teetering on the edge of not being able to cope when I walked into my new rheumatologist’s office.
Is the New Year a new start for you?
It generally hasn’t been for me. I much prefer the new book smell of fall for my fresh starts. New Year’s felt forced. I often worked that night and had to ask my patients the date every hour all night long. It confused all of us and constantly reminded us of the passage of time, blurring the effect of waking up to a fresh beginning in the new year.
This year was a bit different, right? A bit of a dumpster fire, by some estimates. Way out of bounds for what most of us expected.
The end of 2020 felt like the perfect time to embrace all that New Year’s had to offer.
Last night, I got an email from my job. It was addressed to all the per diem workers on my unit, reminding us of our education and scheduling requirements to stay in the hospital’s good graces. There was no due date in the email for the education compliance.
Failure to comply, it concluded, may result in termination.
I set my laptop aside after reading the email and tried to figure out what about the email had bothered me. I remember a similar from one last year. When I read it, I freaked out – Was I behind on my education? Was I working enough weekend hours? (Everything was fine.)
This year, I have been so mentally bogged down by family life, homeschool life, and the pandemic that I actually HAVEN’T done my education, at least not all of it. So maybe the email WAS for me.
