Young Children Should be Accompanied by an Adult

We’ve been quarantined now for… I don’t even know anymore. At least 145 days at this point. If you’d have checked in with 145 day younger me, the hermit me, I would have told you quarantine sounds divine. I get to work from home and stay safe, so what could I possibly have to complain about? I was so young and naïve back then.

Turns out, many hermits still need a little bit of outside world time. Who knew?  

145 days in, I’m trying to figure out how to keep myself entertained, keep my brain engaged, and avoid falling into the swamp of sadness.  The swamp of sadness is challenging. During this 145 days I’ve lost my dog (13 years of puppy love is hard to get over under the best of circumstances and it’s been a particularly painful challenge during quarantine), had to cancel my monthly slumber parties with the granddaughters, missed my older granddaughter’s 4^th birthday, missed my younger granddaughter’s 1^st birthday, missed officiating my baby brother’s wedding, missed comicon, missed several concerts (like “tickets were already purchased and now I don’t know where my money is” kind of missed), and we will more than likely be postponing our 25^th anniversary vow renewals. I recognize that these are first world problems, but that doesn’t stop me from feeling disappointment over what’s been lost. It’s fair to say that 2020 can fuck off right about now.  I’m sure you understand.

The hostility and hatred online drove me into a social media hiatus. I highly recommend this one – way less stress, way less drama, way less hurt for an overly-empathetic human. I was fearful that if I didn’t step away, I would ultimately end up with about 4 friends and 4,000 haters. The down side is that I am woefully uninformed about what’s going on in the lives of my friends and the occasional texts aren’t the same. I’m also woefully uninformed of the current bullshit going on in the world, which is a double-edged sword. That whole balance between informed and sane thing… it’s a very fine line.

This morning in an attempt to figure my shit out, I watched a parade of Ted Talks. (If you haven’t seen Maise Williams do her talk yet, you should. She’s such an observant and wise soul for one so young. I adored her from GoT anyway, and now I’m beyond smitten). At the conclusion of my binge watching session, I determined that I needed to get back to writing. I haven’t done so in many years and it used to help me process my shit. Because quarantine has continued on longer than I’d imagined, I most definitely need an outlet. This seems as good as any. Ideally I’d have a rage room filled with breakable everything and when things became too heavy I could just go in there and smash my rage away.  Sadly, a rage room is not realistic for me.  And since I don’t go outside due to potentially compromising underlying conditions, I can’t go to the shooting range. But I’ve got to find a way to release some of this angst before it eats me alive. I’m not in a bad head space, and I’d like to find something that helps before I end up in a bad head space. My mental wellness is important to me. I need it in order to be an annoyingly and obnoxiously bright spot in the lives of those around me.

This brings us to the birth of my blog. I wanted a place where I could get my thoughts out and if I so choose, I can share for some thoughtful conversation with others. I have a lot of shit going on in this head of mine. I want to engage with others about a variety of topics. Like how to be a one-woman walking Positivity Project, how to be an effective leader while dealing with ADHD, do you deal with imposter syndrome, why do people hate on Pearl Harbor because it was visually stunning and do you know how hard it can be to make a WWII story visually stunning – not to mention the storytelling was fabulous and showed a complicated human side to something most of us have zero firsthand knowledge of or experience with, and why Five Finger Death Punch gives me all of the emotions and helps me to process… everything.  Like – dude – you don’t even know how much of a blessing they were to me after losing Xander. I bet they never thought they’d be helping some middle-aged (fuck off – people live into their 90’s all the time now – I could totally be middle aged!) weird stranger deal with the loss of their dog.

Because 5FDP has played such a pivotal role in this chapter of my life, I have named my blog “Why is Life Like That, Why am I Like That” – it seems most fitting for where I think I’m going with this. (you saw the part about ADHD, right?)

So welcome to my world. Please fasten your seat belts and keep your hands and arms and feet and…. you know what – just keep your appendages inside the ride at all times.  Young children should be accompanied by an adult. Also – language warning. Like no shit, right?