Hello. Happy Sunday (if that’s the day you’re reading this).
Boy-o-boy-o, what a view from where I sit. Yesterday held a few intimations of endings, all swirled up inside the kind of heart-beat-adrenaline pace I’ve been operating on for the last three weeks. This project that has been the main source of that pulse-panic is pretty close to being done. Things I learned: Even with partitioning off time so I could commit my focus to only one job in the moment, still I made mistakes. Mistakes, sure, they happen but they still affect my ego with a lemon-juice-in-a-wound sting. The idea (unattainable) of always doing everything right is a strong motivator inside me. Objectively I know—and even constantly tell people I love—don’t be so hard on yourself but I don’t actually think about myself. I do move on from the self-flagellation faster than I used to. Fifteen minutes of strong, harsh, inner finger-pointing, followed by a sticky residue. The initial mistake=failure feeling is a combo plate of being exposed as inept and wanting to prove that I’m beyond-the-valley of capable (again, hello, my old friend ego), which is both absurd and boring. The other thing these last two weeks have shown: It’s important to brush your teeth and get dressed before 4 p.m.; to understand that this is not life or death; to ask for what I need, fer fux sake.

And also, visited the home we just sold where my dad lived some of his happiest days. I hadn’t been there in some months and the new people have moved in. I didn’t meet them but saw how they’d set up the porch, the one facing the mountains where Dad and I (then Dennis, once he stepped into my picture) would sit regularly to watch sunsets, sip libations, nibble crackers, and talk while Scrubby Jay would scream and hop a bit too close to the martinis. I wonder if he’ll make the same ruckus for the newbies? I don’t imagine I’ll be going back into that manufactured home park again and as we drove out, a whole scroll of emotional memories unfurled: The many moments of joy with my dad in the passenger seat beside me as we’d head out to do errands or shop or some-such; spikes of worry having just left him, knowing he wasn’t going to eat the food prepared and put out for him; swirly stress that I wasn’t doing enough to keep him safe; extreme happiness when I remembered I was doing a lot and he was so glad we were here. Then there was just standard-issue confusion back then about planning what the next steps were going to be. Of course, as it happened, no amount of planning prepared for the emotions. They just are. So they arrive in waves on all days. Not waves that bury me, but mostly lap at my soul’s feet, splash into my heart. Yet sometimes, of course, I can’t quite get on top of the bigger ones and then I tumble. Fine. All fine. All part of the process.

I’m now going to go for some kind of walk because hells-a-poppin’, I haven’t done that kind of activity in ages. I hear tell of birds and humans out there. Gonna go check them out!