Today felt very fragmented. It reminded me of reading Tweets for hours at a time, constantly context shifting. It’s been a while since I felt like this. And I’m not a fan. Let’s start with the number of items on my mind. There are a lot. And when I get like this, I need an outlet. But first, a story:
During my senior year in college, my best friend and I won a trip to Mexico. One of the many memorable things that we came back with was the concept of worry dolls. As I remember the explanation, when you have something you’re worried about, you whisper it to one of these small, woven figures, place it in its box under a pillow, and then get a good night’s sleep. Ideally, in the morning, the doll did the worrying for you while you got some sound sleep.
If you’ll allow, I’m going to spend a few minutes using these paragraphs as today’s worry dolls, in the hopes that leaving them here will help with my discomfort.
In an homage to a recurring theme here, let’s start with Twitter. The news there keeps getting worse. And more surreal. All while I have this nagging burden to help as many people as possible find new roles, especially people in The States on visas.
Let’s move on to my current role. We had what’s been termed as a “lift and shift” reorganization, meaning they took my entire org, from Director all the way down, and placed it under a different leadership team. It’s left me feeling unsettled, both literally and figuratively, while I wait for a better understanding of new goals and priorities while staring at an unfinished 2022 to-do list.
Now, to politics. As I type these words, results in the Georgia senatorial run-off election are looking good for Senator Warnock’s re-election. But even as I breathe a sigh of relief, I see a gathering storm on the horizon in the form of the 2024 election. It’s like we’re always holding our breath, on constant alert. And I just want to come up for air.
Then, there are the self-imposed expectations that the holidays bring. I know this is an area where I can do a lot of work in relief on my own, but I keep putting pressure on myself to overdeliver, probably overcompensating for my perceived shortcomings as a father and husband by over-purchasing gifts. Nothing is sufficient, and everything falls short. Not to mention the cost of absolutely everything is way higher than we budgeted.
And that brings us to the bigger, uncontrollable items, which I’ll just list because I can’t even fathom where to start finding solutions for them (which is probably why they vex me in my sleep). There’s the probably-pending doom from climate change. And the dire economic outlook for the upcoming one, maybe two, years. Oh, and the fact that hundreds are still dying every day from a pandemic which is much worse than people care to admit. And the fact that those health outcomes are, in part, due to the racial disparities so rampant in our healthcare system (more aptly characterized as our insurance empire).
Unfortunately, I think I could keep listing items for another hour, or so, but I do want to let these worry ’graphs get to work so that I can get some sleep. I hope my worrying out loud doesn’t add to your own list, but if it did, please find some worry dolls of your own, and take care of yourself tonight.
The Day I Tried to Live
06 December 2022
Today felt very fragmented. It reminded me of reading Tweets for hours at a time, constantly context shifting. It’s been a while since I felt like this. And I’m not a fan. Let’s start with the number of items on my mind. There are a lot. And when I get like this, I need an outlet. But first, a story:
During my senior year in college, my best friend and I won a trip to Mexico. One of the many memorable things that we came back with was the concept of worry dolls. As I remember the explanation, when you have something you’re worried about, you whisper it to one of these small, woven figures, place it in its box under a pillow, and then get a good night’s sleep. Ideally, in the morning, the doll did the worrying for you while you got some sound sleep.
If you’ll allow, I’m going to spend a few minutes using these paragraphs as today’s worry dolls, in the hopes that leaving them here will help with my discomfort.
In an homage to a recurring theme here, let’s start with Twitter. The news there keeps getting worse. And more surreal. All while I have this nagging burden to help as many people as possible find new roles, especially people in The States on visas.
Let’s move on to my current role. We had what’s been termed as a “lift and shift” reorganization, meaning they took my entire org, from Director all the way down, and placed it under a different leadership team. It’s left me feeling unsettled, both literally and figuratively, while I wait for a better understanding of new goals and priorities while staring at an unfinished 2022 to-do list.
Now, to politics. As I type these words, results in the Georgia senatorial run-off election are looking good for Senator Warnock’s re-election. But even as I breathe a sigh of relief, I see a gathering storm on the horizon in the form of the 2024 election. It’s like we’re always holding our breath, on constant alert. And I just want to come up for air.
Then, there are the self-imposed expectations that the holidays bring. I know this is an area where I can do a lot of work in relief on my own, but I keep putting pressure on myself to overdeliver, probably overcompensating for my perceived shortcomings as a father and husband by over-purchasing gifts. Nothing is sufficient, and everything falls short. Not to mention the cost of absolutely everything is way higher than we budgeted.
And that brings us to the bigger, uncontrollable items, which I’ll just list because I can’t even fathom where to start finding solutions for them (which is probably why they vex me in my sleep). There’s the probably-pending doom from climate change. And the dire economic outlook for the upcoming one, maybe two, years. Oh, and the fact that hundreds are still dying every day from a pandemic which is much worse than people care to admit. And the fact that those health outcomes are, in part, due to the racial disparities so rampant in our healthcare system (more aptly characterized as our insurance empire).
Unfortunately, I think I could keep listing items for another hour, or so, but I do want to let these worry ’graphs get to work so that I can get some sleep. I hope my worrying out loud doesn’t add to your own list, but if it did, please find some worry dolls of your own, and take care of yourself tonight.
See you tomorrow?