The Stuckness

I recently started working with a new counselor. At our first session last week, I unloaded everything that’s been going on: My dad died in 2020. My mom had a major stroke in 2021. My husband and I have been working through relationship challenges. Motherhood has become really stressful. I haven’t been able to get my martial arts teaching career off the ground.

All of these challenges had become an alphabet soup of confusion, a cloud of overwhelm, a sea of tribulations with no shore. My counselor said, “I think that all of these things are part of the same problem. Does that make sense?” Yes, it did. It felt as if all these threads of my life had mixed and tangled, and I couldn’t get the knots undone anymore.

Thankfully, that seems to be what therapy is for, for untangling knots and moving forward more healthfully. My therapist asked me to write a vision for my life as my homework, and I did that homework yesterday. Beginning the vision, the part before I started writing, was the hardest part. The part before the writing is always the hardest part. It’s as though there is a mental and emotional hurdle that must be overcome if one is going to start writing something potentially difficult. Once I started to get things onto paper, though, the vision came out more streamlined and simpler than I could have imagined.

What surprised me the most about the list is is how concise the martial arts teaching part was. That, and how that section takes up so much space compared to the music section. I thought I had wanted music to be part of my “work” the way teaching is, but it turns out it’s a much smaller category.

It’s smaller because it doesn’t need to be thought out as much, I don’t need to make money at it, and I think my music practice will unfold naturally as I continue to play with friends. How relieving.

So, my next steps are to continue to flesh out what I want my teaching practice to be. To pull all of my dreams and possibilities out of the clouds of my imagination and onto the ground of reality. To start moving forward slowly, purposefully, with clarity.

I can do it!

New Year’s Day

Is a good day to start a new habit, like posting on your blog every day for as long as you can.

I am about to go watch The Lego Movie on the couch with Alex and the kids. It just got to the part where Emmet builds the double-decker couch. I had the opportunity to buy the Lego toy version of the double decker couch once and I didn’t.

It’s something I wish I had bought at the time. They’re really hard to get now.

* * * * *

Anyway, I listened to “New Year’s Day” by U2 today, and had my kids listen too. “Wait, it’s by YouTube?” “No, they’re called U2,” I told my daughter.

I be a lot of kids her generation would say the same thing.

Happy New Year!!

Karaoke Battle Royale

Ok, here’s how I imagine it going:

Two musical acts (which will heretobefore be referred to as “artists”) are chosen.

For example, the artists could be The Beatles v. The Rolling Stones*

Karaoke performers (hertobefore to be referred to as “performer(s)”) may perform songs by the artist they wish to earn points for.

Points may be awarded by anyone but the performer(s).

Points may ONLY be awarded DURING a song by the artist the performer(s) wish to earn points for.

Anyone wishing to award points may add one point per song.

The artist with the most points at the end of the night wins the battle.

To make it not just a battle but a BATTLE ROYALE, add more battles to the mix. Many battles can be going on simultaneously over the course of an evening. Say, start with three. Then, I suppose, you could make a bracket and have the winners of each battle go against each other in a sing-off. But, you know, that sounds like it could take a long time late into the night, and I don’t want to do karaoke for five hours, I generally want to do it for three. So, you young people can stay late and take it to the end if you like, but I’d rather be home by ten.

Anyway, karaoke-goers may participate in battles or not, all are welcome to play but totally don’t have to.

The winner of the whole shebang gets a trophy. The trophy sits next to a picture of the musical act. Nobody who sings actually gets the trophy. So, y’know, low stakes.

Thank you and have fun!

*If the artist is a band, then songs by or featuring any of their members’ solo or side projects MAY be used to earn points for the artist listed in battle

Scared of Everything

The last couple years, I feel like I’ve been scared of everything. This fear seems to be, in part, a function of grief. The grief of losing my father in 2020, the grief of my mom having a stroke in 2021. The grief of seeing the country I love move in terribly inhuman directions. The grief of a few stormy years of marriage, followed by the toil of reclaiming peace amid the storm.

I’m tired. I shut down a couple years ago. I’m un-shutting down now. Opening back up.

Starting to check email again (I’ve been afraid of receiving bad news or learning I’ve done something wrong.)

Starting to go on social media again (I’ve been afraid my friends are upset with me for various, vague reasons.)

Starting to ponder my career again (I’ve been afraid that I couldn’t work out the scheduling of my work with my family.)

Things are less scary, but the tracks that the fear laid inside me are still tracks that my train is tempted to travel on.

I pick up my train. I set it under the covers and I let it rest. Once it has rested, I set it on the new track. It moves forward slowly.

My Streak Ended

My blogging streak ended three days shy of my goal to blog every day for a month. Or two days shy, considering this is a month with 30 days (my habit tracker has 31, and I started on August 23rd, so, math.)

My streak ended because I traveled to Ann Arbor and stayed in my mom’s retirement castle, where I did not know the wifi password. My strokey mom is an unreliable source for wifi passwords, and it was late at night, so after I tried to see if I could log in to WordPress on my phone (I couldn’t), I let my daily post slide that day.

Then I was really in the groove of being in Ann Arbor visiting family and getting ready to play in the alumni band for the homecoming game, so I let myself off the hook for finishing my blog post magic sticker habit tracker month.

I loved blogging every day– having a constant flow of expression helped ease my creative constipation. I feel fine that I ended a few days early.

Hm, so, homecoming was amazing.

Like, one of the best days of my life.

Even better than last year, because MORE of my band friends were there this year.

I invited them. And some just showed up on their own.

That just leads me to think that if I invite even MORE friends NEXT year, it’ll be even MORE fun. And I can just keep doing that, every year. On and on into eternity or until we’re all super old and dead and can no longer play our instruments.

That’s just really a nice thing to look forward to.

Go Blue.