September first, in the morning, we’d dipped to the low 50s. It was crisp, and while I was stoked to open the windows and enjoy fresh air with the slightest refreshing chill to it, by the next morning, I was concerned. 

I visited the north shore the first time in a January. The place we stayed had frozen pipes while we were there. We were unpleasantly bundled from head to toe walking around the little town to get coffee and a bagel and check out their little book shop. I wandered to a beach nearby and walked along it. Wind biting at the tiny bit of my face that was exposed. But it was beautiful. And so very peaceful at a winter beach. I don’t remember if no one else was actually there or not, but I didn’t notice if they were. I decided then and there that I’d move to this place. Not quite 4 months later, I was here, permanently.

Last winter was a haze of long covid complications, repeated other serious illness and generally being unwell enough, it wasn’t advisable for me to socialize indoors much and certainly not without a mask. And just half a year into being here, I didn’t know anyone to socialize with unless I went indoor places to meet people. So, other than trips to see my kiddo or bestie, I hermitted hard. And I picked up on some differences between cold winter here and cold winter in Utah. Here, it’s grey for weeks on end. In Utah, the sun is gone when it’s stormy but comes right back out. I’m honestly not sure when things got dark or light in the winter in Utah, but here the darkest, shortest days were dark just after 3:30 in the afternoon. Short, short days, no sun, and sometimes genuinely bitter cold and windy. If it wasn’t stormy or I wasn’t sick though, I got a walk in to my beach nearly daily. And it was just as peaceful and glorious as I’d experienced in the beach a little farther in from our north shore visit. But it was a very long, very isolated winter. So I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me, that my initial reaction when I realized Fall is beginning was that of a slight panic. I’m not ready for the long winter.

Cue hot, swampy, overcast days … mother nature helping me out a bit

So here I sit on a Sunday afternoon, candles lit, skies dark all the windows open so I can hear the hard rain pounding down outside and the sounds of the traffic on my road. The air slightly cooler than it’s been all week. And with the week, and the hints of Fall on the leaves, and a craving for soups, hearty breads, and an increasing desire to snuggle in blankets, I think I’m ready. Supposedly last year, Fall wasn’t a “beautiful” one because of the drought. This year we’ve practically floated away on rain. I’m ready. 

Oddly for me, Covid was the thing that finally helped me banish non-deliberate weekend working. What I mean by that is that occasionally, but rarely, I do have a super urgent project that makes me need to work the weekend. But other than those random, urgent things, it’s just “work”. And “work” gets done during work time. (Sidenote – if work is so enormous that to get everything done on time, regularly, the company is understaffed. I don’t work weekends because my company doesn’t appropriately hire.) The need to find a way to clearly separate work from non-work when I started working from home during covid has turned into the gift that keeps on giving.’

I no longer have notifications turned on my mail app on my phone. I don’t need to see the number of unread emails I have. I no longer feel compelled to check my phone a few times a weekend or after I log off at night. On vacation, I put all of the apps on my phone related to work in a folder inside a folder. And I don’t touch them. I tell my boss if something is urgent while I’m on vacation, text me  because I won’t be checking emails. I also do all of it without feeling defensive. That was a LONG TIME coming on the learning curve.

The long covid memory issues I can also recognize, for this one purpose, are a gift – if i’m not reviewing my notes or looking at something to trigger my memory, I have to put a lot of effort into trying to remember what I was working on Friday afternoon or what I put on my todo list for Monday. So I just don’t put effort into it.

The net result is that my weekend feel… like weekends. Like 2 days and 3 nights of “not work”. Of time to play, time to adult if needed, and time to just enjoy myself and whatever sounds interesting to do. A lot of other things have come together to seriously diminish “have to’s” on weekends too. Kiddo is in college, so I don’t have kid events to schedule around. I also am privileged to work from home fulltime, so I don’t need to meal prep the week’s lunches. I don’t even have to go grocery shopping on the weekends if I don’t want to. And I often strategically wait to do it on a Monday or Tuesday night when it’s not busy. In fact, most of the adulting I have to do, I shop for on the week nights. 

This weekend, I’ve read, played some games, knit, gone to the beach, celebrated kiddo coming back from her summer job, had a Sunday morning drive for pastries and coffee, and gone on a tour of a local estate/view/thing. I did a little cleaning and laundry. I’ll take the garbage out. But that’s sort of the limit of my adulting this weekend. It doesn’t suck. In fact, it’s sort of glorious.

In any case, I committed to one day, and I knew if that went well I could suggest brunch the next day or something. The one committed day was done a few days ago. As it wound down, I left it at that. And I spent all day yesterday spun up, tense, grumpy, on edge, insecure, and generally just emotionally messy. And before anyone starts with me, *she* doesn’t make me that way. *I* let her get to me. I know that, but it’s no less exhausting, disappointing or infuriating.

All good narcissists will test the boundaries of whatever rules you give them in order to be in your life. I’m utterly out of practice at having those boundaries pushed in person. An eight-hour day is very different than a phone call where I can lie off of my ass and say gotta go because insert unverifiable reason here. It doesn’t help that I literally have nothing in common with her and find her current husband (don’t ride me, this is #5) to be, at best, an arrogant boor. And he’s almost never at his *best*. Ew, I’m noticing shallower breathing and muscles tightening just trying to type this out. At the end of the day, she is who she is. She’s in her 70s and she’s literally never going to change. I don’t expect her to change. I have her in my life as minimally as possible, and usually that works fine.

In any case, where I was really going with this was gratefulness that I have about 1.5 days between seeing her and my retreaty, social shindig. I’ll be attending with all kinds of folks, most of whom I don’t know at all or know anecdotally. It’ll be an “all on” sort of thing for an introvert like me who can socialize pretty well, but woah, it takes a lot out of me. And I’ll be mindful that maybe I’m not starting at my best as I fight off some of the residual emotional gross from just that one full day of in person dealing with my mother. And I’ll be mindful that you don’t share that sort of thing with strangers — especially when you know at least one of them has lost parents they adored in the past year. And that’s fine. That’s normal and acceptable and generally doesn’t bother me.

What bothers me is the general societal expectation that family is to be honored–that I’m pre-tired at all because I felt obligated to see her. I’m supposed to bend over backwards to make wrong things right. That I have a best friend whose family is damned near abusive to her in their simultaneous expectations and demands but also marked neglect. She and I both know how to quit folks rapidly who aren’t good for us– but only outside of the blood family context, and we both struggle at the expectation that we are supposed to make “real family” right. What do you do when genuinely a relationship is nothing but a burden at best and hurtful on average and abusive at worst? Why do we make it feel like people who treasure family at any cost get bonus points?

Back when I bothered to date, I can’t tell you how many guys were put off by my not having my father in my life at all and my mother only at a regulated distance — as though my parents choosing each other for all of their unhealthy glory because it felt familiar or felt good to them is somehow my fault. And that if I were a better human, I’d be able to fix it? Or at least to prove my “goodness” by enduring it with enthusiasm. Then they’d tell me these “great” stories about their siblings or parents that as I’m listening I’m thinking… wow, that is some messed up stuff, and if you think that’s “love”, then I’m gonna hard pass now. Thanks, okay? Byeeee.

Contrast that to how many people I know who have “found family” and honor those relationships like the gold that they are. That see what I see in “real” family. I feel seen by those people. I look at them with respect and know they are courageous, they see their own self-worth, they’ve done a lot of personal, hard work, and I rejoice for them that they’ve found people to love them and they can love the way we’ve all been taught that family should.

And it was awesome. Warm to hot on the sand, sitting up gave me a pleasantly cooler breeze, um, wading into the surf made my legs numb (still getting used to a northern beach life), and I felt…. Warm. Alive. Happy. And realized how content I’d be to laze away hours in the sun only getting up now and again to make a cooling off jaunt to the water and back. #beachbumlife Genuinely, I think it’s a new goal of mine. 

I’d had a conversation the night before with my best friend about our gen Z kids and how THEY ARE NEVER UNPLUGGED. Noise in their earholes and/or video for their eyes ALL.THE.TIME. So I took out my earpods and just “was” on the blanket on the sand. The wind, the waves, the countless conversations around me. It all sort of flowed over me like a breeze, and occasionally I’d tune into one conversation or another.

I wanted to smack the mom who was sing-song toned telling her daughter no more snacks because you already don’t feel comfortable taking off your teeshirt. Or the dad who did NOT throw a perfect spiral with his football but who felt just fine jumping all over his young teen about why he couldn’t get his throws right. The ridiculousness of two women talking about how hard it is to pick the right time to offload their vacation homes to upgrade to better locales. But then the sweetness of the patient mom gently guiding her young daughter to figure out why, by the time she toddled all the way from the water to their plot of sand with her pail of water, the water was mostly gone. And the joy in the little girl’s tone when she covered the hole in her pail and got a full bucket of water back… that she used to dump on her brother. And a whole lotta – “this is the life” or “I love beach weekends” or “that only took us about an hour and thirty mins drive, we should do this more often – so worth it”. 

In the midst of it, I could also hear footsteps on the sand. The sound of fabric on fabric as someone turned over. The squeak of a beach chair. The flutter of a sun umbrella in the wind. The sound of seagulls as they tried to keep an eye on food that might be snatchable. And I could hear my own breathing, a sigh, the sand moving under my blanket. In the midst of the various noises, some people having pleasant times, some people having bad times, some people facilitating another’s good or bad time, I could hear myself, quiet, feeling warm, feeling lazy, feeling happy – satisfied that I went to the beach that morning. Knowing nothing could take away the moments of quiet relaxation from me.

Randomly pretty flowers

Now, I understand, in a vacuum, that if you’ve never done any kind of thought work, self reflection work, therapy etc., sure it might be an “oh” lightbulb sort of thing. But after the first month or two, they pivot to ok – now you must  convince yourself that your current role actually is a match for your “muchness” and if it isn’t well – you’re not trying to make it that hard enough. AND your reports are suffering because you aren’t owning your authentic leadership blah blah blah. Are you exhausted? Or at least wrinkling your nose at the pointlessness of that? Yeah.

That’s not to say that I don’t get a little something out of these things, occasionally. Self-relfection (when it’s without someone else’s agenda) is never a bad thing. This time I’m doing the hmmm… no wonder I’ve had a hard time in my life finding the kind of work that I love for longer than a few months and that is satisfying. This version of “your upbringing influences you” asked about both parents values and grandparent or whoever you were around values too. 

While I’ve always known that I’m as well-adjusted as I am because I spent summers with my grandparents, and that my parents were very different from my grandparents, I’ve never actually done a side by side values comparison. In my case, my dad-like figure grew up in abject poverty, so he worships money at any cost as though it will save him. My mother grew up spoiled, lazy and entitled, and has always been happy with someone else financing her life. So success for their child looks like a career that makes lots of $$. And that’s sort of it. That’s success. And that should make me happy.

My grandparents were also very poor for a long time and then… at some point all the jobs they’d had over time coalesced into having some savings at the right time for a good entrepreneurial sort of gig. And they lived in comfort the second half of their lives. I don’t know if it was the great depression childhood, living through WWII or just who they were, but the worst thing I could ever do is a job that makes money off of hurting others, ideally it at least nominally helps others. And while I think they would say “money helps” they’d just want me to have a job that makes me happy. Or that facilitates my happiness. 

I recently applied for a new job with a company with crazy interviewing practices. I struggled about applying because I just changed jobs beginning of last year. But I like the company, it’s mission, and what it produces, and the job sounded like brain candy for me (something my current job doesn’t have much of). Their interviewing is their attempt at trying to avoid implicit bias. Not sure it actually works, but I’ll give them a star for trying. I made it 3 rounds into a 5 round process — out of 1500 applicants. 

While all those things about them made me say, yes, apply. What really made me apply — knowing it was available as an opening, was how little I like my current job. Which. Is what I’ve said of nearly every job I’ve ever had, often within the first year of employment. I know that companies can’t be honest in interviewing and say “hi, everyone here is NOT the smartest person and you won’t work on complex legal issues — you’ll be babysitting people at levels who should know better”. I mean, if you know, you know. There’s honest and then there’s… that. So fine. Jobs are never what has been advertised. 

In my case, not getting the new job now I think was a gift? It reminded me that I’m halfway through some growth and change commitments I made to myself about 18 months ago. Step one – get a job that allows me to work wherever I want, at least stateside. Done. Step two – move somewhere wildly different. For so many reasons, it was time to make a big living change. Done. Step three – integrate and settle into new place. Mmm – still working on it. .Step four – figure out what I’d like to prioritize for this next third of my life. And I skipped that last step entirely. And it shows in my day to day life. 

So what does all that have to do with realizing that my parents and grandparents had very different values? That my inherent discomfort with realizing that the next chunk of life is that I don’t want to “achieve” like I have historically – to someone else’s metrics and values. And that taking myself off of a high-achiever mindset is actually not going to make me spontaneously combust. This reminds me a bit of when I left the law firm. It was SO SCARY. That was when Lean In was big (and still a crock of shit), and I described going to in-house counsel as “not just leaning out, but leaving the table, the conference room, and taking the elevator to the lobby and leaving the whole damned building.” And leaving big firm private practice – it’s easily one of the best professional and human being decisions I’ve ever made. But I couldn’t see that certainty when I did it.

So if I’m not trying to be an officer or GC somewhere, what do I want to do?  I’m not entirely sure yet,. But I want to follow my grandparents’ guidance that it shouldn’t hurt anyone else and ideally should make me happy or facilitate my happiness. So I’m reminding myself this is a goal to figure out. I want to try a few things, starting with finding a way to downshift a bit at current job just so that I don’t use up all of my mental & emotional energy at work. I need to have something left in me evenings and weekends sufficient to create, to interact, to think. To not jones for an abyss of numbness. Weekends, for the most part, I think I’m doing pretty good at. I’m currently sitting on my back patio on a gorgeous 70 degree day writing. And that feels fantastic. I woke up early and did a bunch of gardening and weeding, also feels pretty good. Went to brunch and had a bloody mary. Great. And here it is not even 1 o’clock yet. Work days… I’m not doing awesome at. *If* I have energy for anything, it’s a walk to the beach and back. The occasional knit nite or other social thing out. But by and large I just want to lay on the couch and read about some imaginary place or person and disappear. Working on that. But the important part is I’m remembering this last step of the promises I made myself that I would do. And I’m trying.

I was thinking whether I’m more isolationist out here than I was before I moved. During covid, no, I think it’s about the same if not better from a socializing POV. Even pre-covid though, I’m not sure that my efforts to “get out and about and people” are all that different. If I had to pick a difference, it’s just that in my former home, I had enough friends where, generally, if I wanted someone to go to a game or play with, I could, or I could go alone, and did. Or if I wasn’t feeling especially brave to go out and meeting new people/do new things alone, I had friends I could meet up with for dinner, invite over for games or have a knit night. I do miss that here. 

I’ve got 3-4-ish meetup groups that I do stuff with sort of regularly. And it’s fascinating to me to see which ones I’m excited about, which ones I know I’ll enjoy if I just go (but convincing myself to go is a lot of energy sometimes), and the one that I’m like, gah… do I have to? The one I love is a table top gaming group. They meet once a month at a public library. So it’s a safe, public place, I don’t feel like I have to buy anything (unlike when it’s at a game store), and I feel comfortable. There’s something “lightening” about socializing, getting to know you(ish) over table top games. It’s almost like you accidentally get to know your table mates. It’s very casual and low key. And I didn’t feel like I was “too much” or didn’t fit in. Ironically, since it’s my favorite, I won’t be able to hit another one until May with all of my travel/company coming to town.

The next two I generally like while I’m there, meet a couple of folks I like, definitely get the endorphins in of having socialized, but is “effort”. They’re my knit pub nights and my monthly sewing at the library group. The knit one is run by someone I really enjoy, and I’ve met a couple of folks I really enjoyed as well. But, well, it’s sort of a mousey group? Lots of introverts, which, hey, me too – but I’m the kind that can do extroverted social settings fairly well if I can hermit after for awhile. I almost feel like I’m too much for the group – which is one of my least favorite feelings while I’m socializing. But I came to socialize while we have the common interest/excuse to be there – knit, have a drink, eat. So when hardly anyone is talking. It’s just… gah. I mean – christ, talk about what you’re working on, spontaneously. Or ask someone else. In any case, it’s hard for me to relax when I’m actively trying to encourage conversation without dominating it. I’ve never had this issue with knitters before. I’ve been to plenty of knit groups/nights with huge extroverts. Maybe it lends itself to quieter folk because it’s a meetup group? I’ve been told there are a couple of bars advertising knit nights. Maybe I should try that and see.  It’s sort of the same-ish with my sewing group. That group is newly formed, so I think they are still trying to figure out what they want to do. Generally, the demographic trends toward my own age or a bit older, women who seem to be professionals or were before they retired or cut back. It unsettles me a bit? It’s a bit of “this is my future?” I guess? They’re really nice though, and I think I might fee more comfortable there over time than with the knitters.

The last group – well, I contemplate leaving it on the regular, so I’m not sure it’s worth going over. It’s oddly cliquey for it’s “common theme”. And I just don’t have patience for that shit.

I do other things like go to plays or museums and sports (read: hockey) games. I always make sure to chatter a little with people around me. But that’s also superficial, time limited and I’m mindful not to expect much engagement since folks usually are there with people they wanted to be with. So fine, but maybe less quality socializing. I’d rate it similar to eating dinner at a bar and chattering with people around you. Very light touch, very pedestrian, not particularly socializing well-filling.

And I think that’s the thing that’s been hard – I’ve typically been the person who enjoyed one small handful of close friends, and not super into meeting and keeping track of the lives of a lot of people. I want real connection and meaning. And that takes time to build. Which is fine, but oof, it makes doing the light beer version of socializing So.Much.Harder to want to do. And yet, I should. 

What’s your take away from all of this? I should just keep trying

and maybe try and find another gaming group that’s in a safe, public space and join in so I can do the thing that feels the most comfortable, that I genuinely enjoy … more? Yeah. That.

P.S. I’ve clearly seemingly abandoned all notion of having images related to my topic at hand. Except well, sunrise in your home when you live alone – that isolation thing. Same thing for the island you can get to only at the lowest of tides, and the big-head pic

is me at Crane Castle before an evening play in their ballroom. So. Ya see. All more or less relevant.

It goes a long way. We had a bit of fool’s spring the last week and a half or so. One after work walk on the beach I was hot

And wasn’t that glorious to feel. To be warm again long enough to warm me all the way to my inner frozen parts. 

I’ve been making it a priority to get out for a walk even on the cold and cloudy days. About the only thing that keeps me in is rain. And I think that’s helping a bit. We’re in another cold snap, having the high of the day early in the morning. But today it was sunny and cold and snowy/icy. Which actually made my beloved beach all the more beautiful. 

I’m quiet still. That may go on for awhile. But I think I’m healing a bit. My body is physically feeling a bit better, which really helps. But also I’m having a bit of perspective? Maybe? A year ago this week I was having pictures taken of my house so I could list it. Which means that my house was pristine and I’d packed up most of my things. I listed the house, I moved here to live in a shitty airbnb for 6 weeks while I looked for a new home, went to Scotland for a few weeks, moved into the new house and discovered it was my money pit of problems, got covid, tried to recover, discovered long covid issues, and have been seriously sick 4 times in the last 6 months. While also having a new job. And my basement flooding, repeatedly. So you know. I’m still standing. And that’s a god-damned win. Is it what I imagined when I packed up my house last year, um, no. Big no. But it is what it is. And there’s always my beloved beach.

I need to remember to celebrate my wins when I have them. Find the things that are pretty good and acknowledge them. So the next rough go I remember that it’s not all a pile of steaming crap. I also need to remember that it’s ok to slow down. I took today off of work. I got up early, did some personal things, dropped the car for an oil change and walked to the beach in the sunlight–even as the temperatures plummet it was glorious. I’m admiring the look of the paint color and the other colors of all the things in my living room right now as the skies reflect sunny and then overcast light. It’s beautiful in here. 

In the spirit of celebrating the wins. I just put all the basement things back in the basement. I had moved it all to my dining room because of my flooding. Now that’s fixed (cross your fingers), so my dining room is no longer a storage area of cluttered mess.  I put the last of the pictures up on my walls in there once I no longer had boxes stacked in front of them. They’re water colors of some castles in France that I bought long, long ago. The kind of thing that because I’ve had them so long, they have been in all of my houses, and when I walk by them, I smile a little and know that I’m home.

All this optimism and a bit of zen today – 100% because I walked to the beach in the sunshine.

Last summer, in the midst of everything going wrong with my house, I was SO unwilling to think that I hated my new house. That maybe the move here was a mistake because everything seemed to be going wrong and overwhelming me. I didn’t want to acknowledge those thoughts, and I certainly didn’t want to make them more real by saying them out loud or writing them down. At one point after telling my bestie some new and expensive house problem, I said something like, yeah, but it’s fine. And she called me on it. “It’s not fine.” True, but if it’s not, then what? It’s still my house, and my $$ problem, and… if it’s not fine, now what? 

 And it was only in December with the safety of time distance and feeling like I’d addressed the problems and the house was no longer the enemy that I could admit and say something like “I started hating the house back in the summer”. And I wondered if I would have felt better or worse in the really hard moments in the summer to just say. Yes, this blows monkey’s ass. Yes, this is total bullshit. Yes, this house just might be the devil.

Well, now I might find out. Insert newly discovered, massively expensive to rehab (no option not to though) issue discovered. I hate that this house has so many problems and will likely continue to have huge, money grubbing problems the entire time that I live here. I hate that it’s hard to dream about spring, to dream about making a wandering garden here because it’s not a place of solace and love. It’s a place that engenders my worries. And yet. 

Most of the important rooms I live in are fully changed to my tastes, decorated with new and old personal treasures and a delight to be in. I can look from my bedroom out at the tree branches and see the naked limbs trembling in the cold breeze (or straight up thrashing in the arctic winds) and see the beauty in their swaying. I can remember the delight I felt watching the summer light filter through the plentiful green leaves. Or remember the marvel I felt realizing that I’ve never lived anywhere with tall trees when I had a second story to feel like I’m perched up in the tree. It’s a fun and sort of novel experience at nearly 50. Makes me think of seeing snow fall for the first time in my life at 17, at midnight after being ensconced in the campus library all night and then learning that snow really does glitter as it falls and when it’s on the ground under the cold night sky.

What if I do actually get everything needful fixed? I mean, I thought I’d achieved that in November only for December to come and shit on that parade. But what if the house is just old, wasn’t well-taken care of (and had shitty prior owners who covered that up instead of fixing anything) and needs proper TLC and isn’t actually self-destructing? What if I really do get to the end of finding the big $$ problems and get them fixed so that my house is a home and not the enemy? What if in a year from now, I’ll have had so much peace and solace in this house that I can’t stop from dreaming up my wandering garden for the following summer? 

What I’m learning right now is that not saying the problem or writing it down sure as hell hasn’t stopped me from worrying about it, obsessing over it, planning contingencies etc. Is there a place for genuine acceptance when I hit a problem, so that I can really acknowledge it, how I feel about it and decide whether it has any deeper meaning in my life? What if I stop worrying about it and learn to actually accept all kinds of things instead of white knuckling it pretending that it hasn’t happened or that it’s “fine” when it really, really isn’t? What if that gives me the energy and mind space to let myself relax enough to actually live here? 

What if I find out that I can live in this house, relatively happily and just roll with its punches as they come in a way that doesn’t enable me to retreat from engaging in the rest of my life – of building a “home” not just in the house or my yard or my beloved beach, but also feeling like belong in this little town on my little island, in this new state so different from anywhere I’ve lived before? What if that might lead to generally feeling happy and peaceful and more enjoyment in living? What if I am accept things as they are instead of what I’d want them to be in an ideal scenario? What if that acceptance gives me the freedom and courage to have, say and write any thought that I have in a moment. Even if it’s really negative. Let it be for whatever it is in that moment? Do i get to move on? Do I get to find a way to live better within it and cease living from crisis to crisis? I don’t know. I’ve never been particularly good at that in any facet of my life.

But I tire more easily now from the effort it takes to pretend things are “fine” and from the effort it takes to be the “master fixer”. I don’t want to feel that way anymore. I also don’t want to pivot so hard that I land in fantasy-corruption land called toxic positivity. Ew. Hard pass. So, honesty first. It might be “this sucks – I hate it and it’s not fair”. It’s there. I see it. Maybe it’s poking my feels. Maybe it’s not. Then a quick assessment of whether it’s something that has to be dealt with or not. If yes, what are my options, execute those and move on. It’s a problem being fixed and it doesn’t deserve my worry or fixation. If it doesn’t need to be dealt with, same – it’s been aclknowledged. My feels around it have too. I’ve decided it doesn’t need attention, so it also doesn’t deserve my worry or fixation. Either way, move on.

Sounds simple. Execution may be another matter.

). In any case, I’ve entered into stressful-bag-of-anxiety-land with my house the last many weeks. Right before Christmas, I learned that my “dry basement” as the former homeowners claimed is in fact not dry … not when it rains alot or snows a lot and then melts. (And how not dry the basement is in those scenarios is such that the former homeowners are DEFINITELY lying liars who lie–there is no way they didn’t know.) In any case, the magnitude of the wet in the basement (flooding, if you will, repeatedly) and the soupy mess my yard becomes means I’ve got to shell out $$$ to get it professionally fixed. Both the indoor and outdoor drainage issues. If that sounds expensive, that’s because it is.

And while I had several folks come out and bid, and I chose one and paid the deposit, and I even have a projected construction start date (because yes, the problem is big enough we’d call this “construction”), it doesn’t change the fact that between now and that date, it could rain and snow and melt and on and on. And… it really, really has. I’m now a pseudo professional wet vacc-er who uses wet vaccing as means of bailing water out of my basement. Sometimes, every hour, on the hour. So until I get to construction date (and please don’t let it slip because of the weather), I’m in a place where I wake up each morning and I obsessively confirm that today and tomorrow, there is no forecast for rain or snow. Then I hope all day that will remain correct. And I think – this much worry is probably not healthy, nor frankly is it productive. My basement will likely flood yet again before the construction starts. And it flood whether I paranoically worry about it or not. All worrying around it is doing is making me tired and unhappy. So why? Why is it a struggle to let the worry go? I don’t even feel that hostile about the $$$ the construction will cost anymore because I’ve gotten to the “acceptance” stage with that. It has to happen. And frankly, it will be a mental relief (and on bad water days, physical relief) to have it done.

I don’t have an answer here. Just an awareness that I do this from time to time. Fixate on something that is going wrong, for which i have done all the things I could possibly do and the rest is out of my hands. And yet, I still fixate. Then I’m too tied to do really much of anything that would feel good in my mind/body/soul. Because of that then I spiral more. Super fun cycle. But I’ve always been a worrier and a futile planner for how to avoid the worrisome thing. Hours I’ve wasted mentally planning how I’m going to talk to the ex about something for kiddo — no matter how many mental scripts I plan, the conversation never goes any of those ways. My worrying about a loved one being upset over a decision I’ve made only to discover genuine puzzlement when I ask about it because they were never upset. Whether my house will hold up to -30 degrees outside. And on and on. Hours of my life totaling into weeks probably years where I’ve worried instead of just living my life.

Part of solving all of that has been my choice to live near the ocean. I’ve lived from time to time near bodies of large water and visited when I didn’t. And I’m definitely the kind of person whose internal heart beats, breathing, systems change instantly the moment I hear and see the waves. It’s a peaceful state I couldn’t deny if I wanted to. Even when the sea is raging, the rhythm of it calms me. I’m not sure if it’s the noise, the rhythmic nature of it, the visceral understanding that I am so so small in the grand scheme of things. Whatever it is, I’m grateful for. And I lean on it, even on the frigid days. If the sun comes out at all, I am finding time to get to the beach for even a short 20 mins. I always get home after with so much less noise in may head and my heart. So much more patience and acceptance.

For so much of the year, I have one set of towels in the bathroom, one person’s sets of shoes on the organizer by the door, one toothbrush in the holder, one person’s preferences in meal planning and the grocery list. And how disruptive it seems at first to add a second person’s towels, groceries, toothbrush and so on. But then how incredibly stark and ALONE my single towel and toothbrush look again after she goes to school. 

Photo by Raghavendra V. Konkathi on Unsplash
Image of red and beige toothbrush on white background

It’s easier and faster to adjust to each time she goes. But it’s so bizarre how impactful it is having another person, their things, their rhythms in the house is. And just how empty the house seems when they’re gone again. I wonder if that will ever get easier? Or less in-my-face noticeable in the first place? Maybe once she’s really “moved out” with a year-round place of her own and is actually only visiting me. (The thought of that is just… nope, no. hard pass. I’m not quite ready to think about that seriously yet.)

In my new house, there’s a lot less space than before I moved across the country. I’ve definitely downsized a bit. But I still prioritized choosing a place where she could have her own room – that is hers not just to store things but to decorate, so that she feels at home when she’s here. I’m guessing that for the next handful of years, that may be as much as three non-consecutive months and as little as 3-4 non-consecutive weeks. Which is all part of how it works, right? It’s what I’ve planned. It’s what I wanted to be able to give her when she’s not at school–not just a place to visit but her “home” for as long as she wants to see it that way. And if I’m being very honest, for as much as I really like living alone, I’m not sure that I’m quite ready to not have a space I can go into to be reminded of her essence when I do miss her – dripping out of every book, knick knack, candle and poster she doesn’t have room to take with her right now. 

Image of open doorway with white bookcase, lamp with colored fixtures
and side table filled with hair clips, alarm clock, candles and kitsch

Because I intended it to be “her” space, when kiddo went back to college at the end of last summer, it took me a month or so to feel fine about freely putting things into her room for storage that aren’t hers. If it’s a measure of “easier grieving and acceptance”, I put things back into her room the day she left this time

Not all the things that I inevitably will, but that particular mental block that my things can’t be stored in her unoccupied room seems to be passed. 

I’m in that disrupted state again – or rather, recovering from that disrupted state. The towels and toothbrush look lonely for a few weeks. There’s a bit of a wistfulness when I put my shoes into the organizer and there’s plenty of room. I expect I’ll perk up a bit in another week when I see there’s no kiddo detritus to remove from the table, or the hallway before I clean. Small things after all. Small, unimportant things that help me get my rhythm back. And to enjoy my solitude.